


Hari Potter and the Dissassociates (working title)

by mattthedungeonbat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Agender Neville Longbottom - Freeform, Bi Ron Weasley, Black Hermione Granger, Don't copy to another site, F/F, F/M, Harry Potter has DID - Dissociative Identity Disorder, Indian Harry Potter, Lesbian Hermione Granger, M/M, Pan Lavender Brown, Sirius Black has DID - Dissociative Identity Disorder, Trans Ginny Weasley, Trans Harry Potter, bi harry potter, everyone is autistic bc how the fuck do i write a neurotypical huh? what even is a neurotypical??, genderfluid Luna Lovegood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2020-03-08 12:28:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18894646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattthedungeonbat/pseuds/mattthedungeonbat
Summary: Hari Potter grows up with repeated and sustained abuse, and as such develops Dissociative Identity Disorder. Follow Hari and his system as they turn the wizarding world on it's head.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> In this story, if the disorder is referred to at all, it will be under the period-appropriate but currently incorrect name of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), as the name was only changed to DID in 1994. In real life, please remember that Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is the proper name for this disorder.

It was the 1st of November, 1981. A fair woman, dressed in a green woolen day dress of Victorian style, stood in the shade of a large tree. Her dark hair was piled into a clean bun atop her head, many small plaits swept up among the loose strands with small beads glinting. The plait from her widow’s peak sported a bead glazed in sage grey; behind her right ear trailed a plait with a bead of red and a bead of green. Through rectangular spectacles she gazed with piercing steadiness at a house some many yards away.

Minerva McGonagall was not a woman to be trifled with. When her college had stumblingly blustered something about a Dursley, Minerva had known at once something was afoot. She had set off from her place of employment, the towering castle Hogwarts, at once, and made her way to Surrey where she knew Petunia Dursley to live.

It would not be unkind to say that Minerva did not like Mrs. Dursley in the slightest. After all, Dursley’s younger sister had been one of Minerva’s favorite students, something akin to a younger sister to Minerva as well, or else Minerva would not wear her bead; and as such Minerva was intimately familiar with Mrs. Dursley’s shortcomings. For one, she was loud, and never shut up. Minerva couldn’t _stand_ blabbermouths.

Of course, this particular morning Minerva was a bit upset, so she wasn’t inclined to think charitably on dear Lily’s sister. For this morning a fantastical article had appeared in the paper, which had made Minerva’s hand shake so badly as to slop scalding hot tea down her chin. It had said-- and Minerva put very little stock in that particular paper, but it had _said_ \-- that the war was over. That the great villain who had plagued Minerva’s and indeed, everyone’s lives for so long was gone. And it had said--

But no, Minerva rolled her shoulders back determinedly. She was not one to become so agitated. With a slow breath through her nose, Minerva closed her eyes and centered herself, reached up to brush her fingers over the red and green beads, and in a whisper of breeze the lovely woman with dark hair shrank down to be replaced with an equally sleek grey tabby.

The tabby-- which is to say, Minerva McGonagall-- trotted out from the shade of the tree and followed the sidewalk to Mrs. Dursley’s house. It was a fine house, Minerva supposed grudgingly. Perhaps a bit boring, but serviceable. It was however _not_ the type of house anyone had fond memories of, she was certain of that; it was remarkably unremarkable. Minerva stepped carefully into the yard, her small paws tickled by the short grass, and sniffed at the air wafting from the open kitchen window. A woman and an infant, she identified, with the lingering smells of a man as well. Nothing out of the ordinary. _Why_ had Rubeus been muttering about the Dursleys…?

And so Minerva waited. And the man she had smelled arrived home from work; he was tall and big-boned; certainly the rugby type, and his briefcase looked too small in his large hand. She waited some more, as Petunia’s grating voice wafted out the window, and then as the shadows grew longer the window was closed. By the time night had fallen, Minerva’s muscles had begun to twitch and shiver from the pain of staying still for so long. She had almost given up when a tiny, unidentifiable sound swiveled her ear.

She glanced back over her shoulder-- there, by the tree she herself had hid behind. A tall figure in sweeping paisley robes. A shiver chased itself down Minerva’s spine, raising her fur.

“Oh!” Said the man in pleasant surprise, as he wandered near enough the Dursley house to spot Minerva there in the yard. “Minerva, my dear! What a surprise.”

Had Minerva been human, she would have scoffed. _I sincerely doubt that, Albus._ With a deep breath, Minerva extended upwards into her human glory once more. “What’s going on, Albus?”

Albus Dumbledore hummed and smiled to himself, breezing into the driveway to look up at the Dursley house. His paisley robes were lavender and green and grey, and his long white hair and beard sported many thin plaits, glistening with beads. “I should think you would already know, as you are already here.”

This time Minerva could scoff, and so she did. Albus ignored her serenely.

 _“Albus,”_ Minerva snapped. “What was so important that Rubeus failed utterly to keep it a secret? What could possibly be involving Petunia Dursley at such an hour?”

Albus smiled a little more, and turned away from her to look up at the sky. “We shall see.”

Were she a less dignified sort of person, Minerva would have spluttered and stomped and thrown her hands up. As it was, she narrowed her eyes in a piercing glare at Albus’s back. Luckily for Minerva, however, it was not at all a long wait. In a matter of minutes, the guttural roar of a tailpipe could be heard somewhere off in the distance. Minerva’s heart slammed in her chest; she cast a wild look at her surroundings, at all the sleeping houses, but Albus smiled blissfully up at the stars and no one came outside to see what the ruckus was.

Rubeus Hagrid, a positively enormous man astride a comically normal-sized motorbike, descended from the sky with a little bundle cradled in the crook of his arm, and for a very brief moment Minerva felt as though she might faint.

“It was true,” She whispered, one hand pressed over her hammering heart although she was too numb to feel it, the other rushing to grip the red and green beads in her hair.

For a moment, the smile fell from Albus’s face, even as he stepped forward to take the bundle from his employee so the larger man could easily dismount the bike. Behind his right ear, a thin plait glinted red and green as well.

“L-lily and James….”

“...Are dead,” Albus confirmed gravely, looking down into the bundle. “And here lies their infant child.”

Greif swept through Minerva’s heart like a typhoon, followed by rage, followed by fear. Picking up her skirts, she rushed to Albus’s side, looking down over his shoulder onto the face of her two most beloved students’ child.

Small. That was Minerva’s first thought. Her second thought was a rush of dizzying fear as she both smelled and saw the bleeding web of cuts across the infant’s forehead and cheeks.

“Sweet Merlin,” She breathed, reaching out a hand to touch them but withdrawing it quickly. “Albus--”

“There is nothing I can do.”

She gaped at him in shock.

“I cannot, Minerva.”

“Or you _will_ not!”

“I _cannot_ ,” he hissed, sounding so uncharacteristically furious that Minerva actually took a step back. Albus seemed to take a moment to center himself before continuing in his usual gentle voice; “I cannot, Minerva. I would thank you not to ask me why.”

Minerva could feel her heart pounding, now. Rubeus stood on the curb, twisting his kerchief between his hands. Albus heaved a sigh.

“Young Hari must now come to live with Lily's only muggle relatives, where they shall all be safe from our world for as long as I can keep them so. I regret to do this-- I do,” he added, as if he sensed Minerva’s blame. “But I must. Do not question me on this tonight.”

Rubeus sniffled and shuffled forward, leaning down as if he intended to press a kiss to Hari’s head, but stopping short as there was little surface free of wounds. Albus sighed and, with a wave of his free hand, flourished a thick letter from nowhere and placed it atop the baby’s bundle.

Horrible foreboding rumbled in Minerva’s chest as her employer walked to the stoop and placed tiny Hari on the doormat of the Dursley’s home. She wanted to yell at him for the placement; what if someone stepped on the baby in the morning? She wanted to cry, too. Lily and James’ baby, left out on the step on a crisp November night. But she did neither, and Albus walked past her without meeting her eyes.

Albus was the first to leave. Rubeus lingered a moment longer, crying quietly to himself, before mounting the motorbike and flying away. Minerva lingered the longest, before she finally made up her mind. Walking up to the Dursley’s door, Minerva sat on the step and cradled baby Hari in her arms. She would not leave an infant alone all night. She would stay, at least until sunrise.

 

* * *

 

Before she left early in the morning, she tied a ribbon with a small sage grey bead on it around the baby’s wrist.

 


	2. Chapter 2 - Presence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hari & Co go to the zoo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE be aware that this chapter contains verbal, emotional, and minor physical abuse from Vernon and Petunia, as well as neglect/food restriction.

Nearly ten years have passed. In a cupboard under the stairs, in the dark and dusty air, a tiny figure is curled upon a cot. They have been afforded a pillow and blanket, a small dog bowl of water, and on the shelving on one wall are some one-armed army figures and halves or pages of destroyed paperbacks. Between their fingers is tangled a fraying ribbon with a single, grey-green bead.

The figure on the cot is one Hari Potter. He has come a long way from the bloodied infant in Minerva McGonagall’s arms that crisp November night. His hair has grown out long and curling, what might have been a hideous bowl cut obscuring his eyes if not for the swirling texture. His skin is dark and deeply tanned from working out of doors, and across his forehead and cheekbones is a fractal of white scars, branching like lightning.

Hari Potter is not what you would call a normal child. Unbeknownst to him, there are hundreds of people the world over reading novels about him right this very second. Unbeknownst to him, A beautiful woman in green frowns worriedly into her tea many mornings, tugging on a plait with a red and a green bead as she thinks of him. Unbeknownst to him, he is not alone.

Benownst to him, however, is that there is something…. Different, about Hari. Many somethings, in many different ways. And these somethings which are benownst to him are not benownst to the rest of the world, which shall lead to quite a shaking-up in the future. But for now, Hari is asleep. For now, those somethings don’t matter.

BANG!

Hari flinches awake in a rush of adrenaline, his right arm already raising protectively in front of him before he processes that it was his cousin, jumping down from the top of the staircase to land directly above Hari’s cupboard. Hari sighs, hearing his breath come out higher than normal, and as he lowers his arm he sends a pulse of gratitude back into his mind.

Cousin Dudley finishes stomping his way down the stairs, and runs around the side to peer through the little grate on Hari’s door.

“It’s my birthday, coz!” He shouts, and Hari flinches again.

He can feel, now that he’s awake, the intelligent and wary presence next to his own mind in his head. It’s not nice to wake up and find himself already crowded, but he’s still thankful. Dudley thunders away into the kitchen, and Hari gets up off of his cot slowly. He feels green guiding his hands as he trades one ratty shirt for another, tucking the frayed ribbon under the cot for safekeeping, and by the time Hari has shuffled out from his cupboard and stood up straight he has allowed the peridot presence to scoop him away from the controls.

The peridot presence sighs, brushing off Hari’s ugly shirt and glancing around to orient herself. It’s Dudley’s birthday-- _the twenty-third of June,_ supplies the intelligent presence from the back of her mind. This means that the peridot presence and the smart one will probably be spending most of the day working to keep things as smooth as possible so that Mrs. Dursley can run her son’s birthday with no interference.

The peridot presence heads into the kitchen. Dudley is seated at the table, chattering brightly to his mother, who is tending to him graciously. Mr. Dursley is seated at the other end of the table, reading the paper. Dudley takes visually after his father, the peridot presence thinks absently as she selects a pan and begins to heat it on the stove. He is tall for his age, stocky and well built. He does well in violent contact sports. But he isn’t ill-tempered and stupid like his father; he is inquisitive and loud-- the presence imagines, with little evidence, that perhaps he has more in common with Mrs. Dursley's late sister than he does with Mrs. Dursley herself.

Mrs. Dursley, on the other hand, is tall and slender, perfectly styled with the silhouette of a 50’s housewife. Her ashy blonde hair is curled prettily around her ears and chin, accentuating her long swan’s neck. Mrs. Dursley is not classically pretty, perhaps, nor is she of the classical, bubbly feminine personality. But she is intelligent and well styled, which the peridot presence can respect, if nothing else.

In no time, bacon is frying. The peridot presence is deft with a frying pan, although sometimes that intelligent yellow influence will flood forward to keep her fingers safe from the hot metal or a knife. As always, the peridot presence thanks him, and he sends back a tired and wry pulse of welcome.

“How many, mum, how many?” Dudley is asking excitedly, as the peridot presence moves the properly cooked bacon to a plate and adds new raw strips to the pan.

“Thirty-six, my sweetums,” Petunia croons to him. Evidently she feels this is a perfectly reasonable number, even though it absolutely is not. The peridot presence feels a pulse of emerald attention over her left shoulder and glances back quickly in time to see Dudley’s face fall. Apparently, Dudley does not think thirty-six is an acceptable number either.

“But… thirty-six? Are you sure, mum? Last year-- last year, I had thirty-seven, didn’t I?”

The emerald pulse swells derisively, and both peridot and yellow tell it to pipe down. Now is not the time for bitter feelings and sharp tongues. Petunia looks shocked for a second, before whirling around to count again.

“Oh-oh-- my mistake, dearest, but look! I miscounted, silly old mum! Thirty-seven.”

Dudley sits quietly for a moment, seeming to calculate something in his head. The emerald presence swells again, full of vitriol, mostly because he knows exactly where Dudley’s mind is headed.

“Aunt Petunia,” the peridot presence interrupts, yellow guiding her tongue. “Didn’t you say we were going to the zoo today? That would make thirty-eight, or more if Dudley sees something he likes from the shops.”

“The zoo!” Dudley cries, his half-formed machinations immediately forgotten. “Thanks, mum!”

Crisis averted.

The peridot presence finishes cooking, and begins to set the table. None of the Dursleys stand to help. By the time the presence has brought the food platters to the table, she can feel yellow beginning to take her over.

The yellow presence takes his place with cultured grace as Aunt Petunia serves her son. He’s not allowed to serve himself until everyone else is plated first, and then he is only allowed one slice of toast, and one slice of bacon. The peridot presence had made enough food that both Dursley men can serve themselves twice over, but the yellow presence and Aunt Petunia only take one serving each; Petunia in hopes to retain her slim waistline, and the yellow presence because those are the rules. The yellow presence primly takes a bite of his toast. He’s used to not eating well, but indignance still rattles through him. He should not have to endure this. No one should have to endure this. Would that he could report the Dursleys to the authorities for neglect.

 _It’s okay,_ says a soft voice from inside the yellow presence’s head. It’s not peridot or emerald; it’s mint. Hari.

 _No it’s not,_ the yellow presence thinks back, and he takes a measured bite of his toast.

 

* * *

 

“Are we all ready?” Aunt Petunia calls back from the passenger seat. Piers-- Dudley’s best friend-- Dudley, and the yellow presence are sat in the backseat, and answer in the affirmative.

The yellow presence is in a foul mood; he hates car rides. It’s not just the danger of them, or the fact that Dudley sits with his knees very far apart and takes up too much space. It’s that the yellow presence feels he can’t breathe properly, inside a car. Even the cupboard has more wiggle room than this. Unwanted, dark and amorphous memories try to surface and the yellow presence turns his mind away with force. He leans his forehead against the cool glass of the window as a gentle wash of peridot and mint flow up from the back of his mind.

 _It’ll be over soon,_ they reassure him. He knows.

It isn’t too long a car ride, and with the temperature of the window and the inner reassurances, he makes it through. He’s the first to slip out of the car once Uncle Vernon has parked, and takes a brief moment to stand to the side and catch his breath again as Petunia rallies the group.

The zoo they’ve come to see is probably small, by most standards. But the yellow presence is the only one who has been to a zoo before; to the newcomers, the place is new and magical. As they stand in the short line at the ticket booth, the yellow presence can feel activity brightening his mind. Peridot, mint, twin pulses of emerald green and midnight blue which sometimes swirl around each other as if they are one color. Orange, further back. Pink.

The first stop is an ice cream stand, and as they step into line yellow is replaced suddenly with mint. Hari feels vaguely disoriented, as if he’s not fully awake yet, but Piers and Dudley are both getting luscious chocolate-looking icy pops, and Hari wants one too. Aunt Petunia only allows Hari to get a cheap, watery lemon pop, which Hari might have felt sad about. But a part of him approves of less-sweet desserts, and anyhow one icy pop is better than no icy pop. Hari eats it acceptingly, unaware that the color yellow means more to him than lemons, and that positivity is not, to other people, peridot green.

They wander the main exhibits of the zoo, Hari trailing far behind his group. He’s not used to such big crowds. He isn’t allowed out, much, and when he is he’s always annoyingly reminded of his height. His face comes up exactly to elbow height for most adults; he sustains a few glancing blows to the face as he dodges through the crowd, but for the most part he’s quick enough to avoid getting hit. Yellow quickens his heart with every elbow that comes near, but it’s okay. Hari can handle getting hit a few times.

By the time the Dursley group has begun working towards the indoor exhibits, Hari is tiring. The outdoor portion of the zoo maybe isn’t large empty and uncrowded, but with so many people around Hari is overstimulated very quickly. He enjoys the exhibits, he enjoys the bright colors and the interesting new things, but his brain is getting too loud, pulsing with color and excitement, and he would like to go to bed now. Wearily, Hari scampers to keep up with the Dursleys and feels himself slip into dark green.

His dark emerald green self finds the indoor exhibits more boring, but more appropriate to his mood. The hallways are dark to properly show off the brightly lit exhibits, and Hari-- Hari?-- wanders through the dark halls in silence. The Dursleys are well ahead of him by now; he makes sure to always keep them in sight, rushing to turn the corner so he never loses them, but dawdles so that they reach the end of the hallway long before he does.

Some of the indoor exhibits are bugs, which doesn’t interest him much. A few of them are frogs or toads, which sparks a flare of peridot excitement. It’s not until he reaches the reptiles that he notices something interesting.

The yellow intelligence, calculating and brilliant, floats behind him in his mind. He didn’t notice the older boy come up, and he’s not going to let him have control, but he’s never seen old Yellow do something quite like this before. Yellow may be a straightforward sort of guy but he’s rarely so intense. So he offers his mind openly to the yellow presence and begins to learn.

He learns that there are only three snakes native to Britain. The yellow presence shows him the adders, which the older boy seems to have a soft spot for; the relatively interesting water snakes, which the yellow presence deems “vulgar”; and the smooth snake, which they both find cute in a boring sort of way.

The exhibit also features a large boa constrictor from South America-- and a king cobra. The yellow presence explains to him that this cobra is Asian; he could have read that from the sign, but Yellow is more interesting. The snake can be up to four meters long-- that’s thirteen feet, for the American-- with beautiful coloration of black and yellow. They’re generally larger than other cobras, Yellow explains. Hari-- or…. The dark emerald version of Hari, he supposes, thinks their little faces are cute. It apparently uses that cute face to eat other snakes, which is both fascinating and terrifying.

He can tell there’s more Yellow isn’t saying. It’s as if the older boy is longing for something, as if something is calling him that he’s not sure he should respond to yet. Dark emerald Hari offers his support; whatever it is, when Yellow decides it’s time, he’ll listen and make no immediate judgement.

However, peace can never last. The king cobra seems to feel drawn to Yellow the way Yellow feels drawn to it, and rears up inside it’s enclosure. It makes a low hiss which emerald Hari is positive he shouldn’t be able to hear through the glass, but with a flash of yellow despair he knows why; there are words in that hiss.

_“Masssster hasss come….”_

The snake seems curious, but Yellow’s fear and the sudden shock of hearing an animal talk has emerald Hari bursting into action. He throws his hands in front of him and feels a pulse of…. Something…. Expand out of his chest. The glass of the enclosure turns opaque with a noise like cracking ice, and the people around him scream.

“BOY!” Roars Uncle Vernon from down the hall.

Emerald feels a tug on his consciousness even as he turns and sprints in the other direction. This is bad, this is very very very bad, and he needs to get to someplace out of the way before his uncle catches him. Ideally he could hide in the zoo until sundown, then slip out after his family had left and find his way home on his own. But Yellow, even panicking, vetoes that idea immediately so instead he goes with plan B; get someplace out of the way and let Boy handle things instead.

It doesn’t take long to find an out of the way bathroom alcove, and emerald Hari gasps for breath. He needs to calm the body down before Uncle Vernon finds him; Yellow isn’t as rational when the heart is pounding and Boy will need to look as pliant as possible; shaking and fear will just make Vernon angrier.

And more importantly, Emerald needs to be _as far away as possible_ or else he’ll instinctively block Uncle Vernon’s strike again, which had them in the cupboard with only water for a week last time.

Greyish sea green swirls up from inside him; Boy has a sense of duty. It’s the only fire left in him, but it’s there and he cannot allow anyone else to take his place. Emerald Hari yields to him, wary but willing. He gets the impression of Yellow standing behind him, gripping his shoulders anxiously as he returns to their mind.

Boy sighs and adjusts his posture. Emerald and Yellow are very upright, straight backed sort of people. They hold themselves loftily, which would surely get them smacked into next Sunday. So Boy makes sure to relax and slump his shoulders, lower his chin and eyes, and slouch his spine a little to reduce his already pitiful height.

Uncle Vernon comes around the corner; his normally light skin is blotchy red and his eyes are lined with furious wrinkles. He’s breathing heavily, as if he’s about to start screaming.

Time seems to slow down. In the spaces between Uncle Vernon’s breaths, Boy feels his emotions shut off one by one. His mind clears of thought, leaving nothing but a cozy, cottony denseness behind. Uncle Vernon is stepping into the alcove, bearing down over Boy’s much shorter frame, but Boy feels no fear and thinks no thoughts. It’ll all be over soon.

“How _dare_ you,” Vernon rumbles, flecks of spit hitting Boy in the face. “Do you have any idea what people must think of me? With a _freak_ for a nephew?”

Behind the fog, Boy can hear Yellow remark sarcastically, “Oh yes, _I’m_ the freak. Spot on.”

“ _Look at me,_ ” Hisses Vernon, and Boy quickly makes eye contact with Vernon’s ear. “You disrespectful piece of shit. I don’t know why we take you out in public at all anymore. Your Aunt works so hard to maintain our reputation and you do this?”

Boy flinches a little. He hates when Petunia is brought up.

“She’s distraught, you know. She tries _so damn hard_ and here you are, always fucking it up!”

“I’m sorry,” Boy whimpers, knowing he’s expected to respond now.

“ _Are_ you? Eh, boy, are you?”

“I-I’m sorry.”

“ _Say something else!_ Explain to me why you thought it was a good idea to humiliate your Aunt and I in public! On Dudley’s birthday no less! Do you hate your cousin that much? Are you satisfied, ruining his birthday and all the hard work your Aunt put in? Are you?”

“No,” Boy wavers pitifully. Even if he can’t feel emotions, the body is still reacting to Vernon’s attack, and his throat and eyes burn with the beginnings of tears.

“You think crying is gonna fix this, you piece of shit?”

Boy cries out in fear as Vernon’s hand zooms past his face, grabbing the collar of his shirt roughly and beginning to haul him out of the alcove. The other side of the collar digs into his neck, and Boy scrabbles at his Uncle’s hand, trying to lessen the pressure.

“Ow-- ow, ow--”

“Pipe down,” Vernon snaps, dragging Boy back into the exhibit hallways.

Vernon is a lot taller than Boy, and walking a lot faster. Boy trips and stumbles, choked by his collar, doing his best to keep up with Vernon and keep silent. People stare at them as they pass, and a flare of mint in the back of his mind hopes they’ll notice his tear-stained face. Maybe they’ll call the police.

Aunt Petunia, Dudley, and Piers are waiting outside the shaded entrance to the reptile house. Both boys look away as Boy is dragged outside, tripping over the door frame and smashing one of his knees on the concrete before Uncle Vernon hauls him back to his feet, choking him badly by his collar for a moment. Aunt Petunia’s face is coldly disapproving, and terrifyingly distant.

“We’re going home,” Vernon says.

The people outside don’t look at Boy as much as the ones indoor did. Rationally, he-- Yellow-- knows that this is because everyone is farther apart. In a hallway, it’s much harder to miss a man abusing his nephew. Out of doors, there are lions and penguins to be looking at; no one spares a glance at Boy. Still, vainly, there’s that mint hope that someone will stop them and take Hari away to safety. The security guards…. The young mother with her pram…… perhaps the lady at the ticket booth?

But no. They make it to the parking lot uninterrupted and are ushered into their car. Vernon begins driving in stiff, angry silence.

“I can’t believe you,” Aunt Petunia says quietly, and her voice is weak with tears. “I have tried so hard, I have done my best to look after you, and time and time again you are _so ungrateful!_ I can’t believe you could be so horrible to your cousin. Me, I can understand, maybe. But a boy your own age? What has Dudley ever done to you, huh?”

She pauses, taking a shaky breath, and Vernon takes her hand.

“You’re not coming out with us from now on. I have let you run ramshod over me for far too long and I won’t allow it any more.” She sniffs, and dashes tears from her eyes with her free hand.

The rest of the drive home is silent, and when they arrive Boy obligingly goes to his cupboard and steps inside, and makes no movement or sound of protest as Uncle Vernon locks it. Then he closes the grate, plunging the cupboard into darkness.

In the blinding black, Boy fades to midnight blue. The darkness is oppressive, in some ways, but cleansing in others. He feels his way to his cot and pulls the ribbon out before he lays down, staring up at nothing and twining the frayed cloth between his fingers.

He had used to hope Dudley would take his side. Maybe it was a stupid hope, but they were the same age after all. They were more or less siblings. And in the beginning, while Dudley hadn’t exactly stood up for him, he had at least questioned the differences in the treatment they received. Now, the midnight blue Hari supposes, he has learned to lapse into unthinkingness just like he does.

It’s always humiliating when Aunt Petunia claims Hari abusive in front of peers, but not one had ever stood up to her. Perhaps just because they were Dudley’s friends, and not his. Perhaps. Hari has never had friends before, so he’s not sure how exactly they’re supposed to act.

His stomach burns from hunger, but midnight blue Hari tamps down on the sensation and buries it deep. He takes a moment to sit up and sip from his water bowl like it’s soup; if he drinks enough, the crawling pain in his abdomen will be lesser. He can sleep the rest of the time between; he may have psychedelic dreams about food, but at least it won’t hurt anymore.

It’s going to be a long week.

 


	3. Chapter 3 - Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hari & co get a letter

The first week, midnight blue Hari was stuck in his cupboard with only water. Most of the time he would sleep, and have dreams of wandering through Candyland, chasing giant sentient hamburgers with blue lettuce and pink cheese. He was allowed out during the day for school, which was his only chance to use the restroom and find some food. Everyone at his primary school had come to know Hari as something of a beggar; he had absolutely no compunctions about digging through trash cans, as for some reason people saw fit to just throw away completely untouched food. While he was out of the house, his water would be refilled. He was allowed two bowlfuls a day.

The second week, midnight Hari was allowed bread as well as water. Just one slice of bread a day, served to him in the morning. The third week he's allowed to take all three of his meals in his cupboard, and by then it’s only another week until school ends, and the Dursleys have lost most of their drive to punish him. And so Midnight Hari makes it to Summer, shaky and feeling weak but still very much alive.

Next year, Midnight Hari has learned, Dudley will be going to private school. It's called Smeltings, and sounds like a very terrible school to Hari, who isn’t very fond of the idea of wearing a straw hat as part of his uniform. Really, the whole uniform looks like something only the most insufferable white golf-players might wear, and Hari does not have the patience for golf or white men. Piers, apparently, is going there too. Hari can not mourn the loss.

Hari, on the other hand, will be going to the local public school, which although he has to wear grey for his uniform is no large loss; after all, Dudley won’t be there to spread Aunt Petunia’s tales about him. Hari might actually be able to make some acquaintances. He'll be able to do his own homework, for once, instead of dumbing it down so Dudley fails from cheating off him. He'll be able to eat in the cafeteria instead of hiding in the bathrooms. Idly, he wonders what his parent’s school life was like. He doesn’t know anything about them other than that they sucked royal arse, but he wonders if they had friends. Really, they must have, right? Everyone but Hari has friends. It’s probably normal.

By Monday, is seems like Hari’s future is all in order. After breakfast-- which he doesn’t remember making, although he’s sure he must have, and which he also doesn’t remember eating although he can taste bacon grease on his lips-- Hari gets the mail without being told. He’d rather Uncle Vernon not have a reason to be cross with him again so soon.

At first the mail seems normal; bills, bills, bills. But then, Hari shuffles to a larger, thicker envelope in the centre of the stack. An envelope that’s addressed to him.

 _“Hide it,”_ Says a voice immediately in the back of his head. The voice is the yellow one, older and whip smart, and Hari trusts it implicitly. Deftly, he tucks the letter into the waistband in the front of his trousers, smooth against his stomach between the hollows of his hips where it won’t crinkle and make noise should he walk or sit. He enters the room again just as Uncle Vernon begins to shout for him.

“Hurry up, boy!-- Ah, there you are. Good.”

Vernon snatches the bills from Hari’s hand. Hari, not entirely sure what he’s allowed to do now, clears the table of dishes and begins to wash them in the sink. His hands feel clumsy and not his own; he’s positive he must have washed dishes before, but it feels like this is his first time doing so. As he washes, he listens closely to his relatives talk, heart pounding in his ears.

“Marge’s ill,” Uncle Vernon says, reading a postcard.

“Oh, really?” Asks Aunt Petunia. “The poor dear, is she alright?”

Hari scoffs, extremely quietly. _She deserves whatever illness she gets._

“Some bad seafood, it seems,” Vernon grunts. _Dang._ “She’ll be fine in a jiff, she’s got a good constitution.”

“Of course, I’ll send our well wishes.”

Nerves make Hari’s hands shake, but he finishes the dishes without breaking anything. The Dursleys don’t seem to suspect anything, so Hari dries his hands and tries to act as normal as possible as he heads for the front door.

“Boy, where’re you going?” Demands Vernon, looking up from his bills.

“Out for a walk, Uncle Vernon,” Hari says plainly. He does this every day. It’ll be fine. It'll be fine.

It'll be fine.

“...Mh,” Vernon grunts after a while.

Hari is free.

A huge breath escapes his lungs a he walks away from Number 4. Adrenaline spirals through his body, but he tries very hard not to run. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and walks along the street, looking about as if enjoying the sunny blue sky and wishing he had his grey bead to fidget with. It _is_ a nice day, to be certain. Still, his mind is occupied with the letter. He keeps up his torturous pace until he turns the corner and is certain he can no longer be seen from Number 4, and then he bursts into a sprint, ripping the letter out of his waistband and gripping it tightly as he runs. God, he’s finally got a letter. Addressed right directly to him. It could be anyone. It could be a long lost relative. He could be free.

In no time Hari has made it to the run down park. He doesn’t sit on the swing like he normally might; Dudley and Piers like to go on walks too, now it’s Summer, and Hari doesn’t want to be spotted. So he heads into the small wooded area surrounding the park, tromping into the trees until he can no longer see the playground. Then, just for extra measure, he climbs up a tree and settles himself comfortably on a thick branch.

There, perched some nine meters off the ground-- thirty feet, for the American-- Hari finally opens his letter.

 

Miss Hari Potter

The Cupboard Under The Stairs

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging

Surrey

Dear Miss Potter,

    We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

    Term begins the first of September. We await your notice of attendance by no later than the 31st of August.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall

Deputy Headmistress

 

Hari’s eye twitches every time he reads his honorific title-- “miss.” But he powers through, because there are much more important things going on right now. Such as, what in the bloody hell is a school for witchcraft and wizardry? In response to his question, Hari can feel yellow attention swirl up from the back of his mind.

_“McGonagall, huh?....”_

Hari blinks a silent question to the yellow, who is clearly thinking very hard about something.

_“Hari, what exactly does our bead look like?”_

Midnight blue rushes to the front, a still image of the bead filling their head. _“Sage-green,”_ he describes. “ _Sage-green glazed over a silver base, with a pattern of filigree woven criss-cross in silver.”_

 _“Hm... “_ The yellow voice murmurs. _“Anyways-- Surely you know, Hari,”_

 _“--Surely?”_ Scoffs an emerald green voice, at the same time as Hari asks, “Know what?”

He gets the strong impression that the yellow voice is unimpressed. _“Oh don’t pretend you’re blind, Emerald. You two-- three-- know exactly what I mean.”_

The midnight blue presence crosses his arms. " _We have an idea, old boy, but you seem to have more than that.”_

 _“Yeah!”_ Hops in Emerald. _“So why don’t you tell us!”_

Yellow gives the strong impression of rolling his eyes.

 _"Fine._ _All of you, gather round.”_ He says it patronizingly, but Hari can feel more colours lighting up all the same. _“Surely all of you have noticed by now that we can do things Dudley can’t. Such as that stunt Emerald pulled at the zoo which got us starved for a week.”_

 _“Oh fuck off, Yellow,”_ Snaps Emerald. He doesn’t have to say he did it to protect Yellow from whatever had frightened him so.

 _“We_ **_have_ ** _noticed...”_ Hedges Peridot’s voice, always diplomatic.

 _“That, put simply, is magic,_ ” Says Yellow, capitalizing on Peridot’s level-headedness and steadfastly ignoring Emerald’s pointed glare. _“There are people who can do it, and of course it’s better to be able to do it well. That school will teach us.”_

Before any of the others can interrupt him again, Hari speaks aloud. “Is it safe?”

Yellow pauses. They can all feel him think, ruminating on an honest but not terrifying answer.

_“It is safe in the way any school is safe, I would imagine. There will always be a margin for accidents, as in a chemistry classroom, and there will always be unsavory students. But this is our best shot. We can finally get out.”_

They all stop and think for a while.

Yellow, personally, is strongly in favour. They all know that, can feel his opinion even if he hasn’t explicitly stated it. He doesn’t tell them that it’s due to a painful, soul-deep yearning to finally go home. Peridot, second oldest and often in charge, is inclined to back him on this. She trusts he would never hurt them, and she senses his disquiet. She just wants him to be happy.

Emerald Green and Midnight Blue are, as always, a chaotic mind of what-ifs. Analytics run through Midnight’s mind at a fevered pace, concocting every possible outcome and every possible downfall. Emerald is inclined to go along for the ride, so long as his better half agrees.

Hari, partially lost in his mind but still present enough not to fall out of the tree, fully and desperately wants to go. Even if he’s scared. God, even if Yellow’s scared. He wants to find a home so badly it hurts.

In the end, there’s more in favour than against. Yellow blasts them all with such a fervent wave of relief that Hari almost feels guilty for having to think about the decision at all. But it’s been decided. Now they need a plan.

 _“Okay,”_ Yellow says, sounding much more relaxed now. Peridot sits with him in Hari's mind's eye, her arms looped around him companionably. _“Hari, the first step is to get to Diagon Alley. That’s a wizarding shopping district in London. From there we can access postal owls to send our notice of attendance, your money, and a room to stay in. Are we all prepared to run away?”_

Oh God. Hari hadn't even thought about that. The Dursleys won't let him go to a magical school to learn magic, they _hate_ magic. If he wants to do this, he really has to leave them. And he won't be welcomed back.

 ** _“Prepared_** _is a strong way of putting it,”_ Drawls Emerald. _“But yeah, Blue and I can work it out.”_

 _“Good,”_ Agrees Tom. _“Hari, are_ **_you_ ** _prepared to run away?”_

Hari kicks his heels against the trunk of the tree, frowning a little. “I don’t know. I’ll do it if I have to but… I don’t know.”

Yellow sighs. _“That’s fine. We need to leave today, though.”_

 _“To_ **_night_ ** _,”_ Corrects Midnight Blue. _“I’ve got it covered.”_

 _“Good,”_ Yellow says again. _“Okay? Can we do this?”_

It's risky, and scary, and Hari will be leaving everything behind for things all new. But every part of Hari answers in the affirmative.

 

* * *

 

The first step is for everything to seem as normal as possible. The Dursleys can have no suspicion that anything might be even a little bit off, or this is all for naught. Peridot returns as the sun sets and goes about cooking dinner as she always does. She’s careful not to jump the gun with stealing food; it would be far too risky to steal and then have to sit holding her stash all throughout dinner; no, she’ll cook and eat and clean up as always, stealing from the scraps as she prepares the dishes to wash.

Yellow doesn’t take their meal this time; he’s above this kind of work, and Emerald thinks he looks far to smug whenever he knows something other people don’t. They can't risk his superiority complex giving them away, but Peridot can handle it just fine, although eating makes her feel stuffed and unpleasant. She makes away with three rolls, some meat scraps, and some raw vegetables as she scrapes the plates before washing them. She also steals a knife.

As she approaches their cupboard, a deep ocean teal mixture of Emerald and Midnight Blue takes over. Surreptitiously as they walk, they cut a small piece off of the end of a raw carrot. They enter the cupboard with casual disregard, putting their hand on the doorframe as they stoop inside and pressing the carrot piece into the hole the bolt slides into. The carrot takes up most of the space, leaving just the smallest amount of room for the bolt. The carrot will stop the bolt from sliding completely home; enough that it will still lock, but if they put pressure on it correctly it'll be able to pop free.

They stay in their cupboard as the Dursleys troop upstairs one by one. They worry that someone might smell the carrot, but Uncle Vernon isn't so observant and locks their cupboard without hardly looking; he does it so often that he doesn’t even think about it anymore. They sit in darkness, spending the time by cutting open one end of their pillow and removing the stuffing. They put the food they stole inside the pillow case, and then fashion a backpack out of their blanket to store their clothes in. Really, that's everything they own; they don't feel like taking their broken army figures and half-books with them. Lastly, they pull the ribbon and bead out from under the cot. If they had to leave with nothing, this is what they would fight to bring; it’s the only thing they have that’s really theirs. They tie the frayed ribbon close around their wrist, the grey-green bead perfectly perched between the tendons on the inside of their wrist.

Soon, They can hear the snores of both Vernon and Dudley; it’s time. Moving to kneel in front of the cupboard door, they slide and wiggle the point of the knife between the door and the frame. Just a little bit of pressure on the makeshift lever and the door slides open with nary a sound. They wait in tense silence for a moment, but there is no disruption to the snores. They grab their bags and move into the kitchen. Into the pillowcase goes more bread, some hard cheese, and some fresh fruit. Just enough food for a few days; they don't eat a lot. An empty milk bottle is filled with water from the tap. They tie the pillowcase to the top of their sheet-backpack, put it on and tuck their water bottle into the crook of their arm. The knife is stashed in the loose pocket of Dudley's hand-me-down jeans. They’re good to go.

It’s not a long walk to the nearest rail lines, and they have just enough left over pocket money to catch the train to London. It's relatively empty, as it’s slightly late in the evening to be commuting, so the few people about don’t look at the runaway child very closely. Their heart pounds the entire way, sweat slicking their palms. It's a decent commute for daytime; at night and alone, it seems to drag on forever. But in what's really no time they surface in London, and Yellow begins to point them to where they need to go.

It’s not a particularly long walk to the Leaky Cauldron-- in daylight, it might even be considered an extremely short walk. But it’s night, and they’re very small; the knife is still hidden in their pocket. They grip the handle as they walk, eyes skittering over dark alleyways. They're not sure if they could get away from an full grown adult attacker. But thankfully, they never find out. No one approaches them and they slip through the door to the Leaky Cauldron.

The small pub is quite empty, despite the time of year. Tables and booths stand empty; Yellow counts maybe five unobscured patrons, plus the bartender. Emerald notes the long hair of most of the patrons, the beads slipped onto or woven into plaits. The bartender is bald, and wears his beads plaited into his beard instead. Flickering torch- and candle-light illuminates the room, and could lend to some hidden patrons as well, but they can't do anything about paranoia at the moment. Quickly, Emerald ducks their chin and lowers their eyes. Looking down from the height of an adult, they’re simply an unremarkable runaway brown kid.

Tom, the bartender, slows his motions as the small child approaches him.

“I need to get into the alley,” The child says.

“You alright, kid?”

“Yes, sir. I need to get into the alley.”

Tom pauses for a moment, but this isn’t his responsibility. He leads the kid out back and opens the wall for them. “There you go.”

Yellow waits for the bricks to close behind them before taking charge. Thankfully Tom didn't try to stop them, and didn't really question them either. Still, it's not a big stretch to assume he'd make note of a lonesome, short-haired and beadless child heading into Diagon near school season. Someone may come to check for them in the morning, but they won't be found.

The first stop is Gringotts, which is open all hours of the day and night. More than anything right now, they need money so they can get a place to stay. The tall white marble building towers in the darkness, gleaming blue and yellow in shadow and light. Goblin guards stand by the outer doors as always, and Yellow ignores them. He is not a thief; he has nothing to fear. The bank is empty this late at night save for a bedraggled tramp or two, their hair unkempt but still sporting beaded plaits, so Yellow strides up to a teller unimpeded. He doesn't wait for the goblin to look at him; he knows how this goes.

“I am here to access my trust vault. I consent to blood authentication of my identity as I am not in possession of my key.”

The teller looks down over the desk at him, unimpressed. Yellow offers his right hand, keeping eye contact.

The goblin rolls his eyes and takes Yellow’s hand, slicing his finger with a small blade and dripping his blood onto a piece of parchment. The blood soaks in, then red letters appear on the parchment.

 

Miss Harinder Lily Potter

Lady to the Noble House of Potter

 

“Mh,” Grunts the goblin. He rings a small bell on his desk as Yellow sucks his bleeding finger.

Immediately, another goblin appears, and the teller hands him the paper.

“Mh,” The second goblin grunts. “Right this way then, Miss.”

Yellow is grateful the goblin leaves off their surname in public. The goblin leads them into a few halls, which are no longer made of marble but a more normal looking grey stone, and have the appearance of being chiseled straight from rock. eventually they come to a door, into what is apparently an office room carved entirely out of stone. It's completely empty but for the goblin's desk and a chair before it. On the desk is a name plaque that says something unintelligible, and then below it in smaller letters, “Griphook.” Griphook sits down and gestures for Yellow to do the same.

“So, Miss Potter,” Griphook says, tossing the paper on his desk as Yellow sits in the chair provided. His dark, intelligent eyes skitter over Yellow’s short muggle haircut and thin, frayed clothes. “What a surprise.”

“I doubt that,” Yellow disagrees. “With my eleventh birthday in a few days I was bound to come through here. I require a key to my vault.”

Griphook shifts a few papers, humming to himself thoughtfully. “You don’t have it?”

“I do not.”

“Hm.”

The goblin shifts a few more papers, then opens a drawer on his desk and withdraws a file which he checks.

“Ah, I see, Dumbledore has it. Well, that’s an easy fix.”

Griphook snaps his fingers, and a small gold key materializes in his hand. Yellow carefully makes sure not to blink in surprise as the goblin smirks a very sharp, toothy smirk, and waves toward the door.

“To your vault, then?”

Yellow wasn't aware goblin magic could do that. Elves can't; wizards can't. Perhaps it's simply because of an enchantment on the key, he guesses. Or, perhaps _only_ goblins can do that. Griphook leads him down a sloping passageway which eventually opens to a cliff face and suspended rails. A cart zooms up and parks in front of them right as Griphook nears the edge. Yellow steps in carefully, wary of the deadly drop should he lose his balance transitioning from cliff to cart. He doesn’t….. _Hate_ the cart ride. He doesn’t love it, either, it's far too dangerous and unnecessary for his tastes, but Peridot absolutely does and her shrieks of laughter echo inside his head. He suppresses a smirk of his own; Peridot’s laugh is delightful.

Griphook opens their vault and Yellow makes certain to take the small money pouch inside the corner, a little-known complimentary gift that comes with every new vault. It’s lucky, too, because otherwise he’d have had to stuff their pockets with gold instead; ludicrously noisy and really just ill-mannered besides. He takes far more gold than would otherwise be appropriate, because he knows himself; they'll be getting a lot of books in the near future, and books are expensive. The ride back up to ground level fills Yellow’s head with more thrilled laughter, and he thanks Griphook in a good mood before heading out into the Alley.

All right. First things first, they need a room. Yellow isn’t about to bunk them at the Leaky Cauldron; staying there, they'd be found by morning. No, instead he wanders down the darkened Alley and stops at one of the less-frequented inns, and buys a room for three nights. The desk witch somehow doesn't question a child out on his own so late, but all the better for them. Yellow pegs her as the ditzy type, not likely to think very hard about anything. She likely won't even remember they've come through, if someone does somehow find and ask her. The staircase is long and steep, and the room is smaller than what he’d have gotten at the Leaky, but it doesn’t matter. There’s complimentary hair-care potions in the bathroom that they can use to make their hairstyle less notable, and the bed is a read bed with a real comforter. Yellow sits on the bedspread, eats a small meal from his pillowcase sack, and then he goes to sleep.

 


	4. Chapter 4 - Diagon Alley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hari & Co go shopping

Emerald wakes up in the morning, for the very first time in his life, not in a cupboard under the stairs. He lies in the bed for a moment, reveling in the feel of a real life mattress with a real life comforter, in a real life room with a ceiling he won’t smack his head on if he stands up straight. It’s truly the little things.

He spends a while in the bathroom, reading the little handwritten labels on the “potions” as Yellow had called them, before carefully massaging one for promoting long hair onto the near-shaved sides and back of his head. Then he eats breakfast and, donning his bags once again, heads out into the wizarding world. It’s still pretty early in the morning, he notes as he steps out of the inn’s door. The streets are light, but cold and misty. Only one or two people wander past; overall the mood is bracing, inspiring, and freeing. He glances around for a moment, unsure of which direction to go to find a trunk shop. Yellow is still asleep, so eventually he just picks a direction and walks.

Sure enough, he finds a trunk shop no problem. The store is dead silent so early in the morning; it’s peaceful, Emerald thinks, surveying the merchandise. The whole place smells of wood and sawdust and polished antiques, the early morning sunlight giving it a dreamlike, foggy atmosphere. He has several minutes to browse and read signs before the shopkeeper comes out from the back.

“Oh!” The man says, when he notices Emerald by one of the displays. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t hear you come in. What can I help you with today?”

Emerald notices the beads plaited into the centre of the man’s dark beard; the same three purple-themed beads he’s seen on most people, as well as a blue bead that looks like it could be made of sapphire. He smirks a little at the man and gestures to the trunk in front of him. “How much for an auto-shrink model?”

“Mm, well, that’ll be expensive, son. It’s extra charge since most wizards can shrink ‘em themselves, see.”

Emerald hums, nodding his understanding as he twitches his fringe out of his eyes. The shopkeeper glances at him in the face and then does a comical double take.

“Oh Merlin! You’re Harinder Potter! I’m so sorry, I thought you were a boy!”

Emerald presses his lips together. “Mm.”

“W-well, if it’s _you_ asking, miss, I can certainly give you a discount! I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you sooner!”

And so, Emerald learns that the scar across their face is actually very useful for a monetarily lacking orphan, and also that they’re famous. They leave the shop with a high-end featherlight wizardspace auto-shrink trunk in their pocket, which now means they can buy everything they need and carry it with them, too. Their next stop, at Yellow and Peridot’s insistence now that they’re awake, is clothes.

They _could_ have gone to Madam Malkin’s, certainly. But Madam Malkin’s caters specifically to students, which means her stock is a little pricier than normal clothes. So instead Yellow points him to a smaller, everyday-wear shop, and Emerald buys them several day outfits as well as school robes, shoes, a winter cloak, a day cloak with a deep cowl, winter gloves and a slouching, pointed hat. The owner is kind enough to let Emerald change and store his purchases in one of the dressing rooms, and is also kind enough _not_ to remark on Emerald choosing only gender-neutral wizarding styles of clothing.

Apparently, and luckily, the wizarding world offers more socially acceptable forms of dress than just “boy” and “girl.” There are dress-like robes, and skirts to wear as well as rather Victorian-looking poofy trousers, but Emerald had just got several pairs of leggings and some long tunics, as well as a few outer robes. With the black deep-cowled cloak on top of that, Emerald cuts a very small, very androgynous figure-- and no one can see their hair.

They stop in the shadows between shops for a quick snack before Yellow insists they get stationary next. He wants to get their letter off to Hogwarts before doing anything else, so Emerald obligingly buys some parchment, ink, and quills, and heads to the post office to compose his letter. Inside the post office, which looks fairly normal except that it smells musty and straw-ish and sounds like rustling feathers, he pauses.

“What exactly do I write?” He mutters.

 _“Oh, here--”_ Yellow reaches forward, and Emerald’s hands begin to write by themselves.

 

Deputy Headmistress M. McGonagall

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

 

Professor,

    I have received your letter and am writing to let you know to expect my presence on the First of September.

 

Hoping you are well,

H. Potter

Head of the Noble House of Potter

 

Their hands still for a moment, as Yellow debates something. Then, he scrawls along the bottom;

 

PS-- I have a bead in my possession that I was wondering if you could inform me about. It is my oldest possession, and greatly treasured. I would appreciate any information you may have regarding the subject.

 

“Mh,” Emerald grunts. “Guess that works.”

He holds the letter gingerly, letting the ink dry as he approaches the front desk.

“Hello, I’m in need of a post owl to Hogwarts.”

“O’ course, sonny,” The clerk says, brushing a hand over his beard before he selects an owl and sets it on the desk. Emerald notes his three purple themed beads, this time topped by a bright yellow gemstone.

Emerald taps the ink to be sure it’s dry, then rolls up his letter and ties it to the leather thong on the bird’s leg. “How much?”

“Two sickles.”

After paying and thanking the clerk and taking the owl outside so it can fly, Emerald looks around the Alley. “Books next?”

_“Let’s get them secondhand, they might have some fun ones.”_

“Fun ones,” Emerald scoffs. There’s no such thing as a fun book, but Yellow is a nerd if ever there’s been one and somehow takes joy from learning. It’s not that Emerald doesn’t _like_ learning-- he’ll read if he has to. But even Midnight, the most research-driven person he knows, doesn’t think books are fun. He thinks _knowing_ things is fun.

But they go to the bookstore Yellow recommends, and as soon as Emerald steps in the door he finds himself flung aside by a combination of midnight blue and yellow. Midnight all but scampers into the shop, deftly grabbing the recommended course books as Yellow starts shouting out sections and topics to look for. Soon, the two smartest boys in their brain have accrued a teetering stack of books. A lot of the books they grabbed are advanced books, for upper-year electives or even for topics not taught at hogwarts. Yellow had prioritized books on runes, arithmancy, alchemy, and spell theory while Midnight had gone for history, magical theory, household magic, and survival.

Peridot then requested a few herbology books, Emerald requested charms and jinxes, and Hari asked for advanced transfiguration and magizoology. By the time they get to the register, they have so many books Midnight can barely walk.

“Woah there!” The shop clerk laughs, leaning forward to help Midnight get the books onto the counter. “Someone’s an eager niffler! You sure you’re ready for all these topics yet, kid?”

“Oh yes,” Midnight says. “I want to read ahead and do some study in my own time. Never know what might come in handy.”

“I guess so!” Agrees the clerk. “Let me just ring you up them.”

She waves her wand over the stacks of books, then taps the register, which spouts out a receipt listing all the books and their prices. Midnight quickly takes a mental picture of the strand of red hair hanging before her ear, which sports three purple beads and a deep red one.

“There we go! Sixty galleons-- wow.”

Midnight’s eyes go wide, and he slaps his forehead, making a show of pushing his fringe back slightly in disbelief. The shop girl glances at him, does a double take, then screeches and drops the receipt.

“Oh my god, Harinder Potter!”

“Oh, huh?” Says Midnight, as if he doesn’t know showing the scars would get them a discount.

In the end, the shop girl cuts the price to forty-five galleons-- school books free. Midnight thanks her profusely, somehow a little guilty even though Emerald would have weaseled an even steeper discount. They store their books in their trunk as the clerk gushes and rattles on about something or other, hovering, and then bid her a friendly goodbye. Better to make a good impression, Yellow reminds them.

“Now what?” Asks Midnight as he blends teal with Emerald, before being replaced by him entirely.

They spend the rest of the day shopping. No one goes too crazy in the other stores, and by noon they’ve got all their school supplies except….

 _“How is this gonna work?”_ murmurs Yellow, as they stand outside Ollivander’s wand shop.

Yellow knows for a fact that it will not be possible to find a wand that matches all of them. Ollivander only uses three wand cores, each supposedly matched to a temperament; none of them are versatile enough to encompass everyone residing in Harry’s brain. The wand wood, to a lesser extent, poses the same problem.

 _“Surely there’s other people like us,”_ Hari reasons, looking out through Emerald’s eyes at the storefront. _“Maybe they’ll know what to do.”_

Yellow makes an uncomfortable noise. He doesn’t want anyone knowing about them. Talking to yourself-- having multiple selves like this, in the muggle world it’s borderline crazy. In the wizarding world, he has no idea how anyone would react. He doesn’t want to put them in danger.

 _“Shite,_ ” He murmurs. _“Um, okay. I need_ **_everyone_ ** _up here, right now! Let’s_ **_go!_ ** _”_

Colors light up one by one. Emerald, already at the front, midnight blue, peridot, mint, orange, pink, and very distantly echoes of other colors. Yellow sighs nervously.

 _“We’re all gonna have to stay as present as possible for this,”_ He warns. _“The wand needs to be as close a match to all of us as possible.”_

Emerald sighs, annoyed and concerned, and pulls himself back to join the other colors. Their vision takes on a slightly distant effect; the body walks into the shop calmly, as if on autopilot.

It takes a moment for Ollivander to come out from the back. His hands are covered in sawdust, and he wipes them on his apron as he shuffles forward. The top of his head is balding, but the sides and back still sport long, white hair, and very distantly they feel the sensation of Midnight taking a mental picture of the old man’s copious collection of beads.

“Ahh, Miss Potter,” He says. “I wondered when I might be seeing you.”

“I’m here for a wand,” The body says. The voice that comes out doesn’t sound much like any of them.

“Of course you are, no better place to look. It seems like just yesterday I saw your parents fitted for their wands as well.”

Ollivander prattles on, but Yellow keeps a tight lock on the colors. Midnight is taking notes, but he can’t let anyone get drawn too far forward. They all need to be together. His irritation mounts as Ollivander talks and talks, measuring them with that stupid floating tape. Finally, the old man claps his hands and checks the measurements.

“I see, I see. Let’s start with….”

It soon appears, as they try wands, that all of them are a slight match. Wand after wand spits out a weak array of sparks in different colors, and Yellow feels a violent headache building as he strains to keep different colors from being yanked forward by the wands’ calling. Helpless frustration builds in his chest; no matter what they do, they’ll end up with a badly matched wand. Merlin, they’ll be at a very, very steep disadvantage right from the very start.

Ollivander seems to be getting confused the longer the situation goes on. His great bushy eyebrows furrow and he begins to mutter to himself, going further and further back into the shop each time he retrieves new wands to try. In the end, they finally settle upon a dragon heartstring and redwood wand, twelve and a half inches, supple. Ollivander seems quite confused, as this wand barely matches them better than any of the others. They had been summarily rejected by both phoenix and unicorn cores, and by almost all woods except elder, hawthorn, and redwood. Still, they produce a decent array of sparks in a holographic rainbow. It’s good enough.

They pay seven galleons and step, still on autopilot, out of the shop. Yellow releases his fellow colors with a quite gasp of pain. He stumbles as, with a dizzy rushing sensation, he is slammed into the body and presented with a near-blinding headache. The redwood wand in his hand spits out a single green spark, curiously.

Inside his mind is foggy and inconsistent. He can’t hear anyone’s voices, anymore, but he gets the impression of peridot concern and the idea of resting. Irritation flares along with a spike of pain through one eye; he grinds the heel of his palm into his eye socket and sends a spike of irritation back at Peridot. Right now, he wants to get them a wand holster. _Then_ they’ll rest.

He trudges down the street, nearly stomping, and steps into the first wand supply store he sees. It’s a littler darker inside than it is on the street, and he goes straight to a rack of holsters and grabs one of the auto-adjust, anti-summon models.

“Can I help you?” Asks a sales clerk.

“Ah, yeah,” Yellow says, swapping the holster to the same hand as his wand so he can run his hand through his hair in a tired, fake, rueful gesture. “I--”

“You’re Harinder Potter!”

“Oh-- Yeah, I am. Um, I was hoping to buy a wand holst--”

“Well for you, Miss Potter, of course!” the clerk snatches the holster from Yellow’s hand, rushing to the counter. “For free, even! Only the best for The Girl Who Lived!”

“That’s really not necessary,” Yellow says nervously, following the clerk to the counter with affected timidity.

“No no! Not at all. Here; free of charge!”

And so Yellow thanks the clerk with an exhausted, appreciative smile, and slips on their new holster.

Knowing Peridot would be arguing with him if he could still hear her, Yellow finally heads to Fortescue’s to relax. He gets orange sherbet, taking some small comfort in the fact that if he could hear them, every single color in his head would be complaining and asking for something different. Ice cream won’t help his raging headache, but it will certainly help his mood. He doesn’t think of anything except the tart flavour as he lets the treat melt on his tongue. In this much pain, it’s easy to ignore everything but the most immediate sensory details.

Yellow’s only been eating for a few minutes when a redheaded father and son enter, the young boy tugging his much taller father by the hand. The father laughs a little, stumbling.

“Galahad, please, slow down!”

“Can I have strawberry Daddy? Please?”

“Yes, Haddie, you always have strawberry.”

And so little Galahad gets his strawberry ice cream and is dragging his father to a table when he spots….. Yellow. Crap.

Galahad freezes, eyes wide, and then he squeals. Very loudly. Yellow flinches as the sound stabs through his skull.

“You’re Ha--”

“Yeah, yes!” Yellow cries quickly, one eye squinched closed involuntarily against the pain. “Uh huh, yep.”

He waves the younger boy over hurriedly, and Galahad scampers up to sit at his table. He notes that the child has shoulder length hair, and over his right ear hangs a thin plait with a dull green bead and a red bead. Yellow does his best to appear relaxed and leans in conspiratorially, carefully pulling on Harry’s softer vocal patterns and mannerisms.

“I don’t want too many people knowing I’m here, okay? My head hurts and I’d really like to just enjoy my ice cream.”

“Oh!” Galahad nods. “Right, okay!”

Galahad’s father stands awkwardly next to the table. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Potter, Haddie--”

The young boy makes big, pleading brown eyes at his father, and Yellow molds his tired smirk into a more weary, Hari-esque smile. “It’s all right, sir, please have a seat.”

“Arthur Weasley,” He introduces himself, shaking Yellow’s hand. “And this is my youngest, Galahad.”

“Nice to meet you,” Yellow says, carefully avoiding his normal vocabulary.

Mr. Weasley, like almost all the adults they’ve seen, also wears his hair long. In front of his right ear hangs a red bead, in front of the left dull green-- they must be family beads, Yellow realizes, if Galahad has both. The green bead must belong to Mrs. Weasley. Mr. Weasley also sports the three purple beads and a ruby bead on top, as well as a handful of others, which Galahad decidedly lacks.

Galahad bounces in his seat, excited. “Harinder--”

“Hari,” Yellow interrupts.

“Uh… Okay, Hari-- did you really do all those things in the books?”

Yellow has to physically stop himself from whipping out his normal formality and nearly chokes out, “What?”

Books? Merlin and Morgana, this can’t mean what he thinks it means. Galahad blinks at him.

“Y-yeah? _The Adventures of Harinder Potter_? It’s a series.”

“Published by _whom_?” Yellow bites, his voice cracking from stress.

“Uh, I don’t remember,” little Galahad says nervously, flicking a glance at his father. “So they’re not true then, huh?”

Merlin’s saggy left-- “No, they’re not true.”

Galahad deflates a little, then makes an “oh well” face and sits up straight again. “You want me to send you the first one? I have all of the ones that are out right now, I’ve read them a bunch of times.”

“Yes, please, I would appreciate that Galahad,” Yellow says, then promptly curses himself for forgetting to pretend to be Hari.

Books. Adventure books. About “Harinder Potter.” This couldn’t possibly get any worse. Yellow takes a bite of his ice cream, irritated. He talks with little Galahad and Mr. Weasley for a while, noting Mr. Weasley’s soft demeanor and another pair of red and green beads plaited into his hair, before eventually Mr. Weasley excuses them, begging a need to catch up with his wife. Once they’re gone, Yellow sits back in his seat with a sigh.

The only thing he can think of that they still need is a familiar. It’s a bit vulgar to simply buy one from a pet store; traditionally, much like a wand, the familiar chooses the wizard. This modern practice of reducing them to “pets” is nearly sacrilegious. But at the very least Yellow can purchase them a private postal owl. The letter, while badly written, means to inform that students may only bring one familiar-- traditionally a cat, owl, or toad, and may bring any other non-familiar pets they desire. Yellow is inclined to bend this rule if he or any of the others forge a familiar bond with an animal other than the “traditional” three; they can just call it a pet.

Eeylop’s, contrary to the name, has many other animals than just owls. Yellow enters the store, the musty smell and low lighting soothing to his headache, and glances up. The ceiling is very high, and criss-crossed with branches upon which birds perch. He looks at them carefully. There are several nice owls, but only one catches his eye; a small, cinnamon-colored tawny owl which is doing a nervous dance and looking at him from the corner of one eye.

Yellow walks towards the tawny’s perch and stops, looking up at it. “Hello.”

“Hoo-hoo!” The owl replies. Tawnies are one of the few owls who actually sound like stereotypical owls.

Yellow holds up his forearm and the tawny takes a fluttering hop down, landing on the proffered limb. Yellow lowers it to eye level. It’s very cute, Yellow thinks, with it’s huge dark brown eyes and the eyebrow-marks in its feathers. He’s sure Hari will like it, at least.

“Can you handle having multiple masters, little one?”

“Hoo!”

He’ll take that as a yes. Once again, the owl is discounted. The shopkeeper with his yellow bead stutters and fumbles terribly when Yellow brushes his hair back from his forehead in a pretend-habitual gesture, and offers them all the owl-care products at such a cheap price they might as well have been free. Yellow is sure that someone, somewhere in their brain, feels guilty for using their supposed fame so blatantly, but old habits die very hard. None of them are ever about to spend more money than they need to.

Then, Yellow retires back to their room at the inn. Their hair has grown during the time they were out, thanks to the potion; the back and sides are now roughly the same length as the top, leaving them with a shaggy, curling, unattractive mop of hair. Yellow takes a moment to rinse his hair in the sink before applying more hair-lengthening solution to his whole scalp, then putting it all up in a towel wrap to keep it warm and speed the process a bit. He lets the tawny out of it’s-- her-- cage.

“What should we name her?” He asks aloud to no one in particular. He knows none of the other colors can respond, not with the headache still raging.

Yellows spends a bit of time eating a careful meal. He has to move slowly to avoid more stabbing pains through his head, and by the time he’s finished and the little tawny has stolen his crumbs, a large grey owl has flown up to his window. He lets it in, walking slowly like an old man. The letter is from McGonagall.

 

 

 

H. Potter

Head of the Noble House of Potter

 

Hari,

    Thank you for your most prompt response. Be assured that your notice has been recorded, and we eagerly await your arrival on the First of September.

    Regarding the bead; I fear I am to blame for the mystery of your having it. I am sure you would not know this, as your Aunt is not well versed in the ways of magicfolk, but among our kind enchanted beads are of great significance as social tools. Each family has a representative bead; there are also beads to denote awards, education level, and other such social signifiers. The bead you have in your possession is a McGonagall family bead; I left it with you when you were but a baby, so that you would never find yourself alone. I am heartened to hear that you treasure it.

    Customarily, you would wear the beads of your parent(s) on the right, the bead of your spouse on the left, and any award beads or ally beads in the place of your choosing. You may also choose to wear your family beads in your forelock, should you not wish to marry.

    I would recommend that you visit Gringotts and ask to visit your ancestral vault. You will want to have a small supply of Potter beads on hand, should you encounter any allies you wish to make a public and formal pact with. There should also be however many Evans beads your mother had left upon her death; you are not at liberty to distribute them, as your mother married into the Potter family rather than the more muggle method of taking the name in addition to her own, but you are well allowed to wear one.

    Please never hesitate to come to me with questions. I may not end up your Head of House here at Hogwarts, but I do so hope you consider me an ally all the same.

 

Wishing you the very best,

Minerva McGonagall

 

Hm. Yellow folds the letter thoughtfully. McGonagall had followed his format of address, leaving off the gendered honorifics, for which he is grateful. She had also been so kind as to provide him with what was apparently extremely culturally important information. And an ally bead, so that he might not enter this new world unbacked and unprotected. Hell, she had given him her ally bead long before he had even had a way to know its significance. He tucks the letter into a small compartment in his trunk thoughtfully, and on a whim fishes out their books on household magic.

As he had suspected given the new information-- a full and lengthy chapter on the common magic of hair care. Braiding charms, charms to gently tug the strands of hair to tighten braids which loosen as the hair grows longer, charms for affixing beads to a certain position in the hair. There are even notes on how to perform the charms wandlessly, as they are often taught to children.

That gives Yellow some pause. Wandlessly. Their redwood wand will not perform as strongly as it should for any of them, but if children are taught wandless charms, and it’s considered to be both common and easy….. Perhaps it’s not a measure of power, as he had assumed. Perhaps it’s simply a measure of practice.

He goes to bed early that night, still nursing his headache. But the books lie next to his pillow, providing him hope, and as always the ribbon with McGonagall’s ally bead is twisted through his fingers. Tomorrow, pain providing, he’ll trim up their hair, get his beads, and begin practicing those charms. If he can get the hair charms down by tomorrow, he may be able to begin preemptive study of the charms for school on September the first. Merlin and Morgana, he hopes so. It will absolutely not do for them to appear weak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmk if yall think some illustrations would help with the story. I can do some doodles of bead designs or whatever


	5. Chapter 5 - Plaits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hari & co learn to braid

The last day of August, Peridot wakes up sleepy and disoriented. It takes her a minute to figure out where she is; she vaguely remembers being at the Dursley’s and she remembers ice cream. Their ribbon with the bead on it is twined through her fingers-- Professor McGonagall’s allyship bead, she knows somehow.

Vaguely, she follows the trail of insubstantial memories through the previous afternoon. Yellow had wanted to do some studying…. He needed to go to Gringotts, she’s sure of that….. And hair? Peridot stumbles out of bed to the bathroom and squints into the mirror to reveal a shock; her hair is now brushing the tops of her shoulders, curling and deeply black. It’s quite pretty, actually, although Peridot gets the impression she’s not supposed to have black hair; oh well. At least she can trim the ends for Yellow-- she remembered what he’d wanted to do with it once she saw her hair in the mirror.

Fetching the knife from their things, Peridot carefully uses it to trim off any ends that had grown a bit too long, evening off the lower curve of the hair so that it’s even. Then, lacking a hair brush, she finger combs the hair carefully. Luckily its texture is wiry enough that it doesn’t frizz and tangle like Aunt Petunia’s; there are a few knots here and there, probably due to the natural curl in it, but mostly the hair gives way to her fingers willingly. She brushes the long fringe out of her face, satisfied.

No one else is awake yet, so Peridot enjoys a quiet breakfast by herself. By the end of the meal, she can feel colors waking up and memories of the previous day start to become clearer to her; Emerald’s sleepy influence wants her to go over their clothes.

The new wizarding outfits they have are pretty simple. Emerald had chosen primarily black and grey items, with outer robes in dark jewel tones. They’re not what Peridot would choose to wear, if she had a choice. The style is fine, but she likes much brighter spring colors. But she’s probably the only one; she knows most of the other colors prefer to dress darkly, and she’s quite certain Yellow would pitch a fit if she forced him to wear spring green. She dresses simply in dark grey and is about to head out the door when something slams into the window behind her.

She whirls with a gasp, Emerald roused to dull readiness and forcing her body into a ready stance. It takes them a moment to process the lump of brown on the outside window sill-- a bird? They cross the room cautiously, flinching every time the bundle of feathers moves, and Emerald peers out the window.

“That’s an owl,” He mutters out loud.

“Oh!” Peridot gasps, and quickly opens the window.

The poor owl is clearly old and well used to being handled; it doesn’t balk as Peridot’s hands near it, and so she gingerly lifts the creature and brings it to the desk. There’s a book shaped parcel clutched in its talons, wrapped in brown paper and twine. That must be why it crash-landed; it couldn’t use its feet. Peridot tugs on the parcel gently, and the owl releases it with a weary whistle.

Inside the paper is a letter and a book. The book is a hardback, well worn around the corners, the cover black and emblazoned on the front with a picture of a beautiful girl. She has straight black hair, plaited and beaded in places, blue eyes-- and light tan skin. Peridot glances down at her hand, which is several shades darker than the girl’s on the cover. Her forehead is slashed by a nearly dainty, red-pink lightning bolt scar. Behind the girl is what appears to be the Amazon rainforest. In gold, the arching title reads “The Adventures of Harinder Potter.”

The letter is written in a looping, clumsy hand.

 

Hari Potter

 

Hi Hari!

    I promised I’d send you the first book, so here it is! Since you said they’re not true it probably looks really silly to you, but these are super popular. This one came out two years ago. I guess the author must really not know what they’re doing because you obviously don’t look anything like the girl on the cover! Still, I like it. There aren’t super many books with girl main characters, and most of them are like my mum’s age, so it’s not as fun to read.

    Dad says I need to apologize for running up to you yesterday. I guess it was rude, huh? I didn’t think about it at the time, I just saw your scar and-- really, your scar looks way more like real lightning than the character’s, doesn’t it? But I guess a zigzag is easier to draw. Oh, but I’m sorry for just running up to you like that. Looking back I realize you didn’t look like you wanted company, but you were really really nice. I think you’re probably way cooler than the character version of you.

    Anyways, here you go. I can send you the other ones when you’re done with this one, if you like. All of my brothers will be away at Hogwarts this year, so it would be nice to have someone to write to.

 

Hoping to hear from you,

G. Weasley ♡

 

PS-- Sorry about the owl. His name is Errol and he’s bloody ancient.

 

Peridot sighs thoughtfully. Galahad-- Or, she supposes, “G,” is a good kid. She needs to be careful responding to this letter; Yellow would just lay the facts out straight, but G is clearly well meaning and Peridot prefers to be a little more diplomatic. She’d rather make a friend of G than an enemy.

She pulls some parchment to her, dips her quill, and begins to write, effortlessly slipping into Hari’s speech patterns.

 

 

 

G. Weasley

 

G,

    Thank you for sending me the book! You’re right, the character looks nothing like me, and I’ve definitely never been to the Amazon. It’s a little disturbing to know I’ve been written about when the author doesn’t even know anything about me.

    And yeah, I wasn’t really looking to socialize yesterday, but I’m glad I met you. I don’t really know how cool I am, but I’d be happy to keep writing you. I don’t have anyone else to write, really, although maybe I’ll meet your brothers at Hogwarts.

    I need to read this first book, but I’m not really sure if I’ll want the second. You obviously noticed the character’s nothing like me, and I’m scared how true that might be. It’s really uncomfortable to even look at the cover; I know long hair isn’t considered a girly thing in the wizarding world, but the clothes that girl is wearing clearly are and I would never willingly dress like that. I’m really nervous how people will see me at school, if this is what they’ve been reading.

    Still, I like writing to you. Even if I don’t want the second book, I’d like to keep writing. It was really nice of you to call me Hari when I asked-- I know what my birth name is, but I’ve been called Hari my whole life and I like it that way. Honestly, if everyone at school is going to insist on calling me that other name, or “Miss Potter,” I might go nutty.

 

Thanks again!

Hari

 

There. Peridot sets the quill aside, ink staining her writing callus. Not nearly as outright as Yellow would have been; either G notices the trend and asks questions, or not. Either way, it plants the right seeds; G will know how they prefer to be addressed, and what their image is. Now, on to today’s tasks. Peridot sends the letter off with their new owl instead of Errol; the old bird deserves to get a bit of rest before he has to fly home. Then she heads out the door.

Gringotts is first. It’s much busier outside today, Peridot realizes, even so early in the morning. People are on the street, happy and calling greetings to each other, but Peridot had put on their deep-cowled cloak, and no one tried to talk to the small figure making its way up Diagon. The goblins don’t pay her any attention as she enters the bank, and she mimics Yellow’s actions from their first visit, approaching the teller and requesting access to her ancestral vault. The goblin examines her key for a moment before returning it to her and calling the goblin who had helped them previously, Griphook.

The ancestral vaults are much deeper down than Hari’s trust vault; Peridot feels no fear of the height as she steps into the suspended cart, and is completely unable to contain her squeals and laughter on the ride down. The blast of adrenaline, the wind-- everything pulls spiraling joy through her soul. She can feel Emerald quietly shaking his head at her antics, and when they park Griphook shoots her a bemused look, but she can’t help the wide grin on her face.

“Like the cart rides, eh?” Asks Griphook as he leads the way up to the huge vault door.

Peridot feels the yellow paranoia creeping up from the back of her mind, but she just smiles breathlessly at the goblin. “I’m just in a good mood today, that’s all.”

Griphook grunts in acknowledgement. “Stand back, please.”

Peridot stops some two meters behind him-- six feet, for the American --as Griphook approaches the door and traces something she can’t see on the vast stone surface. With a deep, heavy grinding noise the door splits down the middle and slides open, revealing an enormous vault. Peridot approaches the door cautiously.

The Potter ancestral vaults are, putting it simply, humongous. Piles of gold, antique furniture, armoires, suits of armour and medieval weapons, bookcases--- more than enough to buy and then furnish a small castle. It goes back dozens of meters, paintings propped against piles of gold or hanging on the walls. Mannequins dressed in voluminous velvet robes stand here and there, regal and terrifying in their luxury. Peridot finds herself frozen by trepidation; she’s not supposed to be around anything fragile or valuable. She broke a dish once when they were five and Petunia had screamed until both of them were crying-- there’s too much value in this vault, Peridot can’t-- Yellow sweeps up behind her, warm and encompassing, and she folds to the older color gladly.

Yellow steps inside the vault as cautiously as Peridot had, but he can keep Aunt Petunia’s conditioning at bay. He scans the luminous riches for something akin to beads. At first he’s distracted-- artifacts, books… so many books…. and his eyes alight on a few jewelry displays across the room. From here he can see busts with necklaces, and trays of rings, but as he ventures further into the room he also spots some small bottles set on top of a display, filled with colorful beads.

In fact, he recognizes two of the bead patterns when he arrives at the case. A large bottle contains a great many gold beads, glazed in scarlet with tiny gold lions posed rampant. A smaller, half empty bottle contains what he thinks might be white gold beads, glazed rich dark green with a ring of white gold filigree around the middle. He had seen both those beads plaited into Arthur Weasley’s hair behind his family bead. There is also a bottle of silver and black beads; a small, half empty bottle of light blue and silver beads; an old jar of bright, cylindrical copper beads; and at the very back, a tiny pouch which contains only three beads, seemingly carved of light grey-blue stone and bearing only a straight line engraved around the middle. His curiosity getting the better of him, Yellow selects two little jewelry bags, fills one with Potter beads, and into the other bag puts one of each of the other beads. He also takes an extra Evans bead, to braid into their hair.

There are some other beads scattered around, seemingly part of displays of dead Potters’ jewelry. He feels Midnight taking mental pictures as he spots a few McGonagall beads, a few of the black and silver, some of the red and green beads of Arthur Weasley and his wife, and several pretty burgundy beads as well. There don’t seem to be any books on the nearby shelves recording the different bead meanings-- most unfortunate. Yellow supposes it’s knowledge that’s supposed to be passed down orally. However, he does find three useful books. One dedicated entirely to hair care magic, and two on wandless magic. One of the wandless books looks leagues too advanced for them right now, but Yellow wants it on hand anyways; he’s sure that once Midnight has a proper grasp on things he’ll be able to understand this book in no time. It’s a struggle not to browse for more books-- Merlin, he wants to, but he has work to do. Later. He can always come back.

The ride back up to ground level is not as eventful with Peridot gone; Griphook again seems confused by their reactions, but he refrains from comment. Yellow thanks the goblin courteously and makes his jolly way out of the bank, hugging his new books.

It’s going to be an in-day today, Yellow has decided. All their shopping is done; what he needs to do all day is study his arse off. He knows how to plait in theory, as Midnight is well able to deconstruct the image of a plait in his mind and trace the path each strand must follow, but Yellow is well aware that these things take muscle memory before they can be done really effectively. He’s certain that physical familiarity with the technique will make performing it wandlessly worlds easier, which means he has to near-master a new dexterous skill in… oh, he’ll give himself three hours, maybe. After that he’ll absolutely have to spend the rest of the day practicing the magic part of it, which is going to be far harder.

Back at the inn, Errol is gone and the little tawny has returned, preening herself and looking pleased at completing her first job. Yellow takes two pairs of their leggings and sits down on the floor with his legs out straight. Over the top half of his foot he winds one leg of the clothing, then loops the second pair around the arch of his foot so he has three legs to plait with. In fact, it takes him less than an hour to become proficient with plaiting the leggings, at which point he puts them away and goes into the bathroom, where he begins trying to plait their hair.

Hair, he finds, is harder to plait only because of the unstable grip caused by so many thin filaments all pinched together. But again, in an hour he finds himself comfortably proficient with plaiting, and so he allows himself to spend the last hour messing around with different methods.

And now comes the hard part. Yellow finger combs their hair out, a bit nervous. He has the method of plaiting just about engraved in their brain, and technically speaking doing it with magic shouldn’t be much harder. The problem is that he needs to bridge the gap and make his magic manifest a physical result, which for all his intelligence Yellow is not really entirely certain how to do. Emerald seeps in from the back, still mellow and sleepy, and Yellow lets the younger boy take enough control of the body so that he can conduct magic through it.

For Emerald, using magic isn’t so hard at all. He’s always known what it feels like, and he knows how to make it happen. It’s just that he’s never really tried before to _change_ what happens, operating on instinct alone. That might do for a sticky situation, but their hair is not sticky. Emerald scowls and picks up a strand of hair, letting Yellow position their fingers to being plaiting.

In the beginning, Emerald focuses on pushing his magic into their hair as Yellow plaits it. It takes several hours for him to figure out how to use their magic to manipulate the hair correctly, building up a sort of muscle memory of his own for what it feels like for the magic to be worked into a plait. At first all he can do is make a right mess of things, blowing random strands about as if in a wind or making them dance like worms, but by the afternoon he’s capable of plaiting a free strand of hair using magic alone.

Yellow spares a nervous thought for lunch gone by, but at this point Emerald is invested and he’s not going to stop and lose his flow. He practices and practices, plaiting strand after strand of hair with magic as Yellow’s fingers comb them out again, and once he has the free plait down to near instinct he begins trying to make plaits along the skin of their scalp, which is much more complicated and thus takes several more hours. By the time Yellow is shaking from low blood sugar, it’s evening and Emerald finally feels he’s got the technique down enough to take a break.

Peridot isn’t around to scold them for not eating, so Hari does it for her as Yellow and Emerald shakily take their second meal of the day. He’s too cute to really be effective, Emerald reflects wryly as he slowly makes his way through bread, cheese, and fruit, but at least he cares. Yellow is used to domestic pestering and apologizes to Hari demurely; Emerald will only apologize willingly to Midnight-- who hadn’t been paying attention until he’d bloody thought that, and so now Emerald has to mumble his apology too. Still, everyone can acknowledge that this studying is necessary; they can handle skipping a little bit of food.

Yellow has half a mind to keep working, but Emerald feels like his metaphorical, magical hands have gone numb. He begs off for now, relying on the concept of “sleeping on it” to win his case. In the morning, they can plait their hair, pack, and head to Hogwarts. They’ve studied enough; for now they need to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6 - Training

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hari & co get on a train

On the first of September, several muddled colors wake up in a paralyzing rush of adrenaline. They lay in bed gasping for breath, the miasma of color in their brain shifting and swirling as it tries to choose a color that fits well into the body at the moment. In the end it seems they’re going to have to settle for a very bright, very frustrating muddle instead of just one or two, so Hari stumbles out of bed, a bit dizzy but determined to get things done.

First step is their hair. Hari goes into the bathroom before he remembers he needs the beads, but it takes him several minutes to find the little baggies because they’re not in the spot he’s being shown they should be. Eventually he finds them in the trunk, which he supposes is logical but also he has absolutely no memories-- from anyone --of them being put there.

In the bathroom, a dizzy smear of emerald-ish teal works the Potter and Evans beads into a plait against their scalp above their right ear, and then in the plait above that the McGonagall bead. Hari-- Emerald?-- No one is certain how long it took them. It could well have been an hour, but it probably isn’t because when they return to the room to eat breakfast, they can see the sun hasn’t moved much at all. Emerald slowly manages to make his way through the meal, until the end when Hari returns and find himself almost done eating, unaware that he’d even started. In a fit of frustration magic bursts from his solar plexus, throwing their belongings haphazardly toward the trunk, which only makes everyone more frustrated that they now have a mess to clean up.

Echoing and indistinct, a concept drifts up yellow from the muddle--  _ We need to ice off. _ It barely translates to English, accompanied by the remembered sensation of coolness as a color is forced to front by themself. Ice. Ice off? Hari stumbles to the bathroom, into the tub, and turns on the tap cold.

The sharp, violent sensation of icy water gushing over their feet and legs snaps Emerald into focus immediately, a headache rumbling through his skull.

“Fuck,” He mutters, staring at the water for a second before turning the tap back off. 

They’ve been using their tunics as sleep clothes, and now the hem of this one is wet. Emerald grumbles petulantly to himself as he stands, dripping, and attempts to pull the clothing off without the icy cold hem touching his skin. Only partially successful and shivering hard, Emerald wrings out the cloth and stomps gloomily out of the bathroom.

He gets dressed first, in all black except for a deep wine-purple outer robe. Then he spends a good thirty minutes very grumpily “packing”-- that is to say, near tossing everything he can find of theirs into the trunk. He’s more careful of the books, or else Yellow would flay him, and he’s delicate with the quills and parchment, but everything else gets lobbed in pell-mell.  _ Especially _ the damned wet tunic they slept in.

When all is said and done, Emerald realizes they really don’t own a lot of stuff. A bare handful of outfits, a load of books, some school supplies, and the knife they stole from Aunt Petunia’s kitchen. Well, and the owl, who he randomly decides to name Samira-- or Sam, for short. Said owl is doing a little dance on the desk, and Emerald watches her for a second tiredly.

“Can you meet me at Hogwarts, Sam?” He asks. “That’s your name, by the way. Samira. Sam.”

Samira hoots in what he imagines is an affirmative and does a little hop.

“Good girl, thank you,” Emerald says. He stands and opens the window for her, and she takes wing and swoops outside, pulling a nice breeze through Emerald’s hair. Now they can pack her things in the trunk, and not have to worry about carrying an owl through London.

Speaking of. Emerald turns his very annoyed attention back into their mind.

Gently speaking, it’s chaos. Everything he can see is foggy and transparent, the sounds echoing dizzyingly. He catches a flash of light hair-- probably Peridot… something smaller and blue-- do they have kids running around in their brain?..... But where the fuck is Yellow.

It takes a bit of nauseatingly buoyant navigation to find the older boy, who appears to be slumped in some kind of armchair near the back of their brain space. Emerald takes a bare second to snicker over his beige-yellow vest and white shirt ensemble before kicking him in the shins.

Yellow cries out in pain, jerking in his seat. It takes him a moment to make out Emerald standing in front of him.

_ “What,” _ he snaps venomously, his voice distorting along with their surroundings.

Emerald crosses his arms. “We  _ need  _ you to get us to Hogwarts, you bleeding imbecile. Get off your arse.”

Yellow pushes himself up, staggering as the room briefly fades out and reforms around them. All Emerald can make out of his face is that it’s very pale. He takes the taller boy’s hand and tugs him back to the body, coming to blinking in the morning light with the warm sensation of Yellow next to him in their mind.

“That was rude,” Yellow murmurs quietly, glancing around at their packed trunk.

Emerald shrugs. “All packed, let’s go.”

Yellow taps the top of their trunk, where a mouse symbol is etched in gold, and the trunk shrinks down to a pocketable size. He swipes it from the floor, puts on their cloak, and briefly pats the beads in their hair. He’s decided they’ll floo from the Inn, rather than venture out the muggle way-- he doesn’t feel like being accosted. The Inn they’re staying in, like almost all wizarding establishments, has several public floos. Yellow makes his way downstairs to the floo in the lobby, where he counts fourteen sickles into the money jar, takes a handful of floo powder, and casts it into the flames. The floo address for the station is simply “Platform nine-and-three-quarters.”

Having never been in a floo before, Emerald is caught off guard when the swirling begins. He plants his feet on instinct, crouching as the fireplace spins around him. He has to squint to avoid dizziness, and is able to make out the mouths of various fireplaces as they whirl past. In what is only a few seconds the swirling slows to a stop, and Emerald stands and steps out of the flames.

Platform nine-and-three-quarters looks very strange. It’s much bigger than he thinks it should be, for one thing, and the scarlet steam engine looks just a little bit off. Not that he’s ever seen a steam engine before, but he gets the feeling that  _ something _ in the design is a little odd. They’re early-- the large clock on the wall indicates it’s only eight, so Emerald has the pick of the compartments.

He chooses one randomly and pulls out their trunk, setting it on the ground and tapping the top of it, which reverts it back to its original size.

“What do you want to study?” He asks Yellow, opening the lid.

“We’ll need to do the most spellwork for Charms and Transfiguration,” Yellow says, pulling out the textbooks for those classes. “We can read up on other stuff in our free time.”

They start with the levitation charm, since Emerald already sort of has the feel down from learning to plait. It’s a simple matter of setting their tiny, featherlight trunk down on the floor, and Emerald focusing on pushing their magic into it as Yellow lifts it up and down. In thirty minutes, Emerald is able to zoom the tiny trunk all around their compartment, at which point he trades with Yellow.

Yellow has never done wandless magic before, but he has the advantage of knowing exactly how the flow of magic is supposed to feel-- after all, he and Emerald share a body, and so Yellow was able to observe exactly where the magic came from and how it flowed. His only issue comes from sparking the magic inside; once Emerald starts the flow for him, Yellow is easily able to levitate and control the movement of the tiny trunk. 

Emerald, then Yellow, then Midnight, and then Peridot and Hari each take turns learning to levitate the trunk. Midnight has the same trouble as Yellow, and his control isn’t as clean. Peridot can get her magic flowing just fine but isn’t able to make it flow  _ out. _ Luckily for all of them, Hari seems to be a natural and barely needs any instruction before he has the trunk doing flips through the air. After a moment of taking turns practicing on their charms text, and then on their unshrunk trunk, Yellow pulls out their wand.

“I don’t imagine we’ll be able to perform as well with this wand,” He explains to the others in a quiet murmur, although he’s relatively certain the train is empty. “I believe it would be best if we learn to cast wandless magic whilst holding our wand, so that people do not have any reason to suspect our weakness.”

Of course, as a wand is designed to channel magic through it, holding a wand in one’s hand whilst  _ not _ channeling magic through it is a task and a half. They quickly find that no matter how hard they try, at best they are only able to split the magic half through the wand and half outside it, which results in a bizarre lag as the wand spell weakly levitates their shrunk-again trunk, and the wandless magic then catches it and moves it more strongly. Yellow can feel the frustration building in several of the other colors, and in a blast of inspiration he grasps onto the emotion and feels their magic stabilize, the floating trunk snapping into line with the point of their wand.

The mass surprise from the colors has the trunk falling to the floor, but Yellow still counts it as a success.

“What was that, old boy?” Asks Midnight curiously.

“I’m not certain,” Yellow hedges, “But I believe putting emotion into it provided enough power to stabilize our output of magic. Before, as you may have noticed, it felt very spread. That extra focus and intention seemed to snap our wandless magic into a focused beam surrounding the wand.”

Midnight hums, and Yellow can feel his mind whirring with calculations and theories.

They move on next to the lighting spell, this one more challenging. They can’t quite figure out what turning magic into light is supposed to feel like, and as a result can only make a rather disturbing looking green fog float around their fingertips. When tried with the wand, the instrument simply seems to become flatulent.

They give up quickly, and move on to transfiguration. The book says the first order of business is match to needle, so Emerald uses their knife to gouge a matchstick-sized piece of wood from the floorboards. Then, together, the system sends their magic into the splinter and then blade of their knife, feeling the magical differences.

The wood, according to Midnights analytical description and Peridot’s more instinctive one, feels very warm and-- in Peridot’s own brilliant terms-- “woody.” The knife of the other hand, at least the metal blade of it, feels stark, bright, and ice cold. They slowly identify the sort of encompassing, wood-grain texture of the splinter’s magic, as well as the very strangely dense malleability of the blade’s. Then, the begin to try morphing one into the other.

The most obvious factor to start with is temperature; the colors gather together, focusing so strongly on the splinter in their hand that the rest of the world blurs and disappears. They send their magic into the wood, feeling the warmth of it, and then begin to pull and drain that warmth away. Into the top of the splinter, like a piercing brightness at the top of their head, then feel brilliant coldness and light begin to seep in. When the cold reaches their fingertips, the colors blink to clear their vision, which had gone completely black but for the strange visualization of colors and magic flow.

The splinter in their hand is now a startling silvery color. Still very clearly wood, still lightweight and porous, but the wood grains appear to be made up of individual strands of metal. Emboldened, they feel into the splinter once more. If the temperature is based on the appearance for the most part, than the texture they feel must correspond to the material itself. It feels simultaneously like stretching a muscle and being pinched about the temples to seize onto the woody texture of the splinter and bend and force it into the crystalline brightness of metal, but when they clear their vision once more, a perfectly metal splinter is pinched between their fingers.

“But it’s not a needle,” Points out Midnight.

“Have we ever  _ touched _ a needle?” Hari asks.

The colors spend a good minute wracking their collective memories, but none of them can identify a single time they’d ever touched a needle. Hari pouts. “Dang.”

“It’s alright,” Emerald says, somewhat doubtfully. “A needle has a point, a shaft, and an eye, right? We know what it’s supposed to look like. All we have to do is get a feel for those things individually and form the needle in steps rather than all at once.”

The shaft is the easy part. With knowledge of what changing the material feels like, it’s no problem at all to slim down and round out the metal splinter into a small cylinder. The point, they can similarly adapt from the tip of their knife. But the eye… That requires some creativity. eventually, they end up drawing out the bottom of the pointy cylinder into a sort of flat spoon shape, splitting it open in the centre, and then shaping it until it looks more or less like a needle. And now, before they can go again, they need their wooden splinter back.

Actually, that part’s not so hard. Transfigurations are notorious for not staying transfigured, so when the colors even suggest the magic of wood to the needle in their hand, it snaps back to its original form. They spend the rest of their time streamlining their wandless match-to-needle transfiguration, but before they can try it with a wand the other students begin to arrive.

Emerald snaps the needle back to wooden splinter form and tucks it into the gouge in the floor, instinctively nudging the magic of the two bits of wood to snap back together and repair the damage. They clean up the compartment, trading the Charms and Transfiguration texts for Potions and Herbology, and then pocket their trunk and sit with their back to the corner, facing the door as they read.

The first person to find then is actually the youngest Weasley boy. The top of his head appears in the compartment door’s window, before he raises to his tip-toes to look inside. He grins brightly when he sees Hari squinting at him from inside the compartment.

“Hari!” He cries, wrestling the door open.

“I thought you weren’t coming this year?” Hari asks, setting his book aside as Galahad enters, shutting the door behind him.

“I’m not, but I knew you were and so I wanted to say hi!” He pauses, then giggles a little and waves. “Hi.”

Hari laughs. “Hi.”

Galahad smiles and fidgets a little. “Um, about your letter. You maybe won’t want to read the other books, if that’s how you feel about girly things. Harinder-- er, that is, the character-- she has a few adventures where she goes to balls or has to flirt with wizards to get a clue for her quest, and it’s really--” He wrinkles his nose, waving his hand back and forth as he tries to come up with a word. “I mean, I can imagine if it was me, I would super hate to read a story about myself where I have to dress up in a doublet and romance witches and stuff. Not that I don’t want to romance witches! Or--” He stops, having confused himself.

Hari smiles a little. “Thanks for warning me…. Oh, um. I noticed you signed your letter as “G,” Would you prefer I call you that instead of…?”

“Oh!” The younger boy pauses for a second, then looks a bit bashful. “Really?”

“You called me Hari after I asked. It’s only fair I do the same for you.”

He deflates a little. “Thanks… yeah. I-I don’t really like my name, but you know. It’s not like I can tell people not to use it.”

Hari wrinkles his nose. “Yes you can?”

G blinks at him.

“What, you can,” Says Hari, waving a negligent hand. “I do it all the time. Not even very nicely, half the time. Every time someone uses your birth name, you just interrupt and stare them down and repeat the name you want to be called.”

“Oh,” Says G, looking a little shell shocked as he stares into the middle distance. “Oh. Well… Okay, then.”

Behind them, the compartment door opens and a pair of older redheaded boys peek in-- obviously identical twins. 

“Hey, Haddie--”

“G,” the small boy interrupts, turning around to face his brothers and puffing up a little.

One of the twins blinks. “Huh?”

“My name is G.”

The two boys stare for a second, their faces identical pictures of confusion. “Oooookay? Uh,  _ anyways, _ Mum wants you back outside. Pretty sure stowing away to Hogwarts is a crime or something.”

G twists up his mouth acceptingly and turns back to Hari. 

“You’ll write me, right?”

“Promise,” Hari says. “Don’t forget about me either-- I might be busy with schoolwork, but you can always just write to tell me about your day or whatever, I think that’d be nice.”

G beams and makes as if he’s going to hug Hari, then pauses and offers his hand to shake instead. Hari gratefully accepts.

“Write me tonight, okay? I wanna know how the sorting goes!” And then the smallest Weasley boy bounds away, scattering his older brothers as he bounces through the door.

The twins shake their heads, looking after G for a moment, before turning back to Hari.

“And who the hell are you?”

Hari raises an eyebrow and taps his scar-webbed forehead. The twins stare at him for a moment before their faces slacken in shock. 

“Holy Morgana, you’re Harr--”

“Yep!” Calls Hari loudly. “Hari Potter.”

“Right,” Agrees one of the twins, a bit awkwardly. “I’m George, this is Fred-- You already met Galahad, I guess.”

“His name is G, but yes,” Hari agrees amiably.

“Right,” Trails the other twin-- Fred-- in a disbelieving tone. “Um, well, nice to meet you I guess. Bye.”

Hari blinks as the twins close the door in his face. “That went well,” He mutters under his breath. Inside his head, Emerald snorts.

It’s only a little while before another Weasley interrupts Hari’s reading-- very tall like his father, but looking younger than the last two. He peeks inside the compartment nervously.

“Um, ‘scuse me?”

Yellow looks over the top of his book with raised eyebrows.

“Uh, my brothers told me Harinder Potter was in this compartment, a-and--” He doesn’t finish the sentence, shifting his feet in embarrassment.

“It’s Hari,” Yellow corrects, blending with Hari as he lowers his book without closing it. “Who’re you?”

“Uh, Ron,” the tall boy says, stepping into the compartment a little and offering his hand. 

Hari goes in for a handshake, and is shocked most unpleasantly when Ron takes his hand and goes to kiss his knuckles instead. Quick as lighting, Hari yanks his hand back, staring at the other boy with wide eyes.

Ron stands frozen for a moment, his face a mask of fear, and then he stands up, backs into the door, bounces off of it and hurries away.

Hari blinks.

_ “Is this what we’ll have to put up with?” _ He asks the colors silently.

Yellow sighs.  _ “Perhaps worse. Once we’re sorted, it would probably be prudent to speak with our Head of House quickly.” _

Hari doesn’t bother picking up his book again after that, leaving it lying open in his lap as he stares almost unblinkingly at the compartment door, waiting for the next intruder. The train begins moving after a while, and the rocking motion sends Hari into an open-eyed dissociation as he sits there, feeling silence envelope his brain.

Knocking slowly brings him out of his stupor. There’s another boy outside the door, shorter and pudgier than Ron and with light brown, nearly blond hair that curls to frame his face in ringlets. He opens the door slowly, peeking his round face around the edge.

“Um, sorry to bother you,” He begins a little tremulously. “B-but I lost my toad, and I was wondering if you’d seen it.”

“A toad?” Hari asks, blinking several times to restart his brain. He thinks back through his walk up the train. “No, sorry, I don’t think I have.”

“Oh.” The boy nods and goes to close the door, but Hari quickly stands.

“Hey wait, do you need some help? I can help you look, if you want.”

“You don’t have to,” Says the boy softly.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hari asserts. “Here, just a sec.”

He pulls out his trunk and puts his textbooks away, then shrinks and pockets it again before following the other boy out into the corridor.

“So, what does this toad look like?”

The other boy laughs a little. “Um, like a toad? He’s greenish and squat and bumpy, I guess. Sorry, that’s probably not much help.”

“S’alright,” Hari says lightly. “Okay. A toad.”

The two boys begin going door to door, asking after the toad. Hari also scans the hallway. About halfway up the train, Hari notices something oddly lumpy pressed into the corner near one of the doors.

“Hey, what’s that?”

The other boy hurries over to look, and then scoops it up and whirls around with a relieved grin. “It’s him! Oh, thank Merlin, you’re the best. Er-- Sorry, I never even caught your name.”

“Hari,” Hari says simply, offering his hand in what he hopes is obviously for a handshake, and nothing else. Luckily, the other boy takes it as such.

“My name is Neville. Thanks so much, Hari, really. I don’t know what I’d do if I’d never found him. Gran would flay me alive.”

He says it with only a half a joke in his face, and Hari grimaces uncomfortably and begins leading Neville back to his compartment. “Were you sitting somewhere else?” He asks.

“Oh, no,” Neville says quickly. “I have my trunk on me, but if I didn’t find Trevor-- the toad-- well, I had to find him. So I never got a seat anywhere and now it’s all full up.”

“Sit with me,” Hari says, as they reach his mercifully still empty compartment. Neville looks hesitant, but after a moment he thanks Hari and follows him inside.

As it turns out, Neville is actually not bad company. He apologizes a lot, for things he has no reason to apologize for, which gives Peridot  very bad feeling. But he’s friendly and easy to spend time with, and Hari likes him. Neville is also very good with plants, and he was raised in the wizarding world. He explains a lot about some of his favorite plants in his greenhouses back home, so Midnight memorizes what he can for class, which makes up for not being able to read much earlier. It takes a while for Hari to notice the burgundy bead hanging from the end of the plait behind Neville’s right ear.

“Hey Nev-- Is that your family bead, the red one?”

“Hm?” Neville picks up the plait, looking at the beads on the end. “Oh, yeah. The burgundy one is my dad’s-- that’s for Longbottom. The blue one is from my mum’s side of the family, she was a Macmillan.” 

“I saw a few Longbottom beads in my family vault,” Hari remembers. 

“Did you?” Neville asks, looking surprised. “What’s your family name?”

“Uh….” Hari shrinks, and fidgets a little, but Neville is looking at him expectantly. “Um… Potter.”

Neville stares. Hari stares back. Neville stares some more. Hari winces.

“Holy  _ shite, _ ” Neville gasps, then claps his hands over his mouth in horror.

Hari laughs weakly.

“Sweet Morgana,” Neville continues, muffled behind his hands. “Oh Merlin, I thought you were a boy--”

“Ah,” Hari waves his hand uncomfortably. 

“No, no, you don’t understand!” Neville cries, flapping his hands. “You’re the Head of your House, a Lady! I was completely improper!”

“Look, I was raised by non-magic folk,” Hari says dismissively. “I have no idea what is or isn’t proper.”

“That’s a bad thing!” Cries Neville.

Hari wilts. “Sorry, okay? No one taught me a bleeding thing, I didn’t even know I was famous until a few days ago. And I hate all this stupid “Lady” stuff. I’m Hari. Just Hari.”

“I-- You-- That’s-- Oh,” Neville stutters. “I’m-- Oh, Merlin. Okay, um, Hari? I’ll teach you everything you need to know. I was raised with this stuff-- you should have been, too. The basic stuff you’ll be fine with, but there’s a lot of gendered stuff also you’ll need to know. How to dance, for one-- how to talk to wizards of different social classes, how to--”

Hari groans, slumping back in his seat, and Neville stops with a sympathetic look.

After that, they talk wizarding etiquette. Hari learns that for a son of a Noble House greeting a Lady, kissing the knuckles is actually perfectly appropriate, which means he accidentally majorly snubbed Ron Weasley. When he mentions as much to Neville, the other boy groans and put his face in his hands. Hari throws his hands up.

“Well how would you bloody feel if some strange boy walked up and tried to kiss your knuckles! It’s  _ weird, _ mate!”

_ “Hari,” _ Groans Neville despairingly. “Merlin, you really don’t understand. You’re not just a daughter of a Noble House-- if you were, rejecting Ron’s greeting would be a major insult, but still excusable by youth. You’re the  _ Head _ of your House-- essentially, if you had gone up to Ron’s father and Mr. Weasley had completely refused to entertain you. See?”

Hari wilts a little. “I-it can’t be  _ that _ bad, can it?”

“You bet your bollocks it is!” Neville cries, before slapping a hand over his mouth and uttering a muffled, “Sorry.”

“I don’t care about swearing, Nev,” Hari says tiredly. “So what am I supposed to do, eh? How is a “Lady” supposed to greet the son of a Noble House?”

Neville stands up and gestures for Hari to do the same. “Okay. So… Say you’re Mr. Weasley, and I’m some highborn girl who isn’t Head of her House.” Neville dips into a surprisingly graceful curtsy, bowing his head and averting his eyes. “Like so. Then Mr. Weasley-- That’s you-- Would take her left hand and kiss her knuckles.”

Hari, extremely awkwardly, takes Neville’s hand and brushes a kiss across his knuckles, grimacing slightly. Neville, still sunk into the curtsy, bobs a little deeper and then stands. 

“Like that. Now, opposite, you’re you and I’m Ron. Properly, Ron should have bowed--” He does so-- “And  _ then  _ you would offer your hand to be kissed.” Hari doesn’t offer his hand, so Neville rolls his eyes, grabs Hari’s hand, and delicately kisses his knuckles before rising from the bow. “It’s really not that hard, Hari.”

Hari jerks his hand free, scowling. “And what if it’s a girl?”

Neville sighs, and shrugs. “Some Ladies choose to ignore girls, some make them kiss their hand also. Up to you.”

“I don’t like all this stupid hand kissing!”

Neville makes a face as if he’s being squeezed about the middle by a python and shakes his fists to the heavens. Hari crosses his arms, still scowling. The other boy paces for a while, calculating something in his head, and is about to round on Hari again when the compartment door opens behind them. A girl their age peeks in, her big brown eyes round and inquisitive.

“Hello,” She says plainly. “Sorry to bother you, but I’ve heard people saying Harinder Potter is in this compartment and I--”

Hari groans in disgust, throwing his hands up and stepping around Neville to flop into his seat. The girl blinks at him, then turns expectantly to Neville, who sighs. 

“Sorry,” Neville says. “Yeah, that’s Hari. My name is Neville. You are?”

“Hermione Granger,” The girl says, opening the door fully and offering her hand to shake. Neville stares at her hand for a second, then at her, then at Hari. 

“Miss Granger, um, c-could I be so rude as to ask you to help me? I’m trying to teach Hari the etiquette a Lady of a Noble House is supposed to follow and, maybe having a muggleborn girl in the process will help everyone understand each other better.”

Hermione blinks, glancing at Hari who is resolutely sulking in his seat, staring out the window. “Um, I suppose? How can I help? And it's Hermione, please.”

And so Hermione joins them in their compartment, and Neville re-explains everything he’d told Hari so far. When he’s done, Hermione wrinkles her nose and sits back in her seat, thinking.

“Well…. That’s all very antiquated, isn’t it? I mean it feels like a property show.”

“Exactly!” Bursts Hari. “I’m not going to be some demure little bint in front of old men as if I like them, and I’m not going to pander to stupid  _ boys _ trying to woo me!”

“Wh--” Neville blinks. “What? Hari, I know drinking age is seventeen in the wizarding world, but you’re unofficially considered an adult  _ now. _ That’s why formal schooling starts at eleven-- you’re learning how to run a household like an adult.”

“That’s a bit young, isn’t it?” Hermione asks in shock.

Neville sighs. “You have to understand-- it’s a combination of the old ways and of living really long. Back in the day, when fifty was considered ancient due to muggles killing us left and right, a kid turning eleven was the first step to adulthood. Things are a bit different now-- now that we’re separated from the muggles we live much longer, but our traditions have stayed pretty much the same.”

“Oh.” Hermione nods thoughtfully. “I guess that makes sense. Um, what “old ways” are you referring to?”

“The druidic ones, mainly,” Neville says. “Muggleborns have brought in a lot of Christian stuff with them, which is really pissing off the more intense traditional families, but our foundation comes from the Celts.”

“But… well there isn’t much information on the druids, is there?” Points out Hermione. “All the sources on them are second hand and heavily biased.”

Neville shrugs. “The Romans weren’t exactly friendly. When it became clear what was going on, the druids started cutting themselves off from muggle society. The Celts didn’t have a written history, which made things easier, and with the mythology of the area already talking about faerie creatures and such they had a bit of leeway in their disguises as long as they weren’t recognizable as druids.  Honestly Hermione,” He continues. “I think if you knew more about our history, the structure of our society today would make much more sense.”

“Well there should be a class on it then,” Says Hermione. “I read our history text and part of the one for next year and all it talks about is goblin rebellions and witch hunts.”

Neville cringes.

“...What?” Asks Hari, trading a glance with Hermione.

“Well…. I mean, that class might be a tiny bit biased,” Neville hedges. “It only covers about a quarter of the actual history of the goblin rebellions. They cut out a lot of the curriculum to keep muggleborns from going wild on things they didn’t understand-- Sorry.  --It’s not important, really,” he insists, when he sees Hermione scowling at him. “Sorry.”

“Hm,” Hermione says.

Someone knocks on the door of their compartment. Neville glances up, then does a double take at the white blond boy outside the window. 

“ _ Shite, _ ” He whispers. “Hari, please, _please_ , follow my lead. Please.”

He stands, straightens his robes, and then opens the door.

Outside, a boy and girl stand arm in arm, flanked by two much larger boys of the same age. The boy is slim, pointy, and as translucent as glass, his platinum blond hair falling in a perfect sheet to his shoulders. The girl on his arm has darker skin, her hair the same texture as Hermione’s, but the front is plaited to her scalp, the back up in a ponytail. 

Neville offers a curt bow to the boy, and then the girl. “Draco, Pansy.”

The “bow” Draco returns is much closer to a nod, while Pansy bobs a curtsy.

“Neville. It’s been rumoured up and down the train that the  _ famous  _ Harinder Potter is among us.” The boy's silver eyes cut to Hari, who stands up cautiously.

Neville sends Hari a wide-eyed, pleading look, clearly begging him to play along. _Fine,_ Hari grumbles in his head, squinting menacingly at Neville. _J_ _ust this once._

“Harinder Potter, Head of the Noble House of P-Potter, may I introduce Heir Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius M-Malfoy, Lord of the Noble House of Malfoy; and his betrothed, Heiress Pansy Parkinson, daughter of Hawthorn Parkinson, Lady of the Noble House of Parkinson.”

Draco bows shallowly, while Pansy curtsies to the same depth Neville had in his demonstration. Hari, reluctantly, offers his hand to Draco palm down. The other boy barely touches his fingertips as he “takes” Hari’s hand, and pretends to brush a kiss across his knuckles.  Neville snorts, and Pansy rolls her eyes. When Hari decides to offer his hand to her, too, she takes it properly and bestows a delicate kiss.

“Interesting company you’re keeping, Potter,” Draco remarks, cutting a glance between Neville and Hermione. Pansy takes a sweeping look over Hermione and wrinkles her nose. Neville clears his throat and gestures for Hermione to stand as well. 

“Heir M-Malfoy, Heiress Parkinson, may I present Hermione Granger.”

Hermione curtsies and offers her hand as Neville had shown her. Neither Draco nor his betrothed take it, and Hermione withdraws it quickly.

“You’re muggleborn, girl?” Pansy asks, looking over Hermione in disgust.

“...Yes,” Says Hermione slowly, sounding deeply offended. “And we’re the same age, I’d thank you not to call me “girl.””

Pansy sniffs. “If you’re going to dress like a little girl then I’m going to treat you like one, Granger.”

“I’m-- What?” Gasps Hermione, looking down at her jeans and sweater. “Everyone dresses like this!”

“No, sweetheart, they don’t,” Pansy says patronizingly. “You and the other muggleborn girls will stick out like a sore thumb at Hogwarts, if that’s how you’ll all be dressed. I do hope you at least got proper robes?”

“I-I got Hogwarts robes,” Hermione says hesitantly.

Pansy rolls her eyes. “And you’re going to wear your school uniform all the time? Honestly. I heard Lady Potter was raised in the muggle world too and yet here she is looking perfectly acceptable, if a bit plain.”

Hermione spins to look at Hari’s outfit, then back at Pansy’s. While Pansy is wearing a green dress which seems to cross Victorian and Celtic fashions, her leather shoes, the cut of her black outer robe, and the beads plaited into her hair match Hari’s style quite closely.

“Well I didn’t know!” Hermione defends. “No one told me there was a dress code!”

“You look like a tourist, dear,” Pansy says snidely. Her eyes narrow on Hermione’s hair. “No family, no friends… No one will expect you to stay long.”

“Wh--” Hermione’s hands fly to her hair, and she looks at Neville for an explanation.

Hari cuts around her, midnight blue and yellow guiding his voice. “Heiress Parkinson?”

“Hmm?”

“Would it be too much trouble to ask you to help teach Hermione and I the plaiting charms you use? I did mine by hand this morning, but I’m sure there are better ways.”

Pansy sniffs, her eyes flicking between Hari and Hermione before she tilts her head in acquiescence. “Certainly, Your Ladyship. I would be honoured.”

They part on tense but not antagonistic terms, and once the door is closed and the pair is far enough away, Neville deflates like a popped tire, melting down into his seat in boneless relief.

“Sweet Merlin, thank you for behaving, Hari,” He groans.

Hari sticks out his tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually had to cut this chapter in half bc BOY did it get long ;-_-


	7. Chapter 7 - Sorting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hari & co come to Hogwarts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for DYSPHORIAAAAAAAAA

The rest of the ride to Hogwarts is relatively peaceful. The three dress in their black Hogwarts robes, Neville and Hari replacing their normal outer robes with them while Hermione simply pulls it on over her muggle clothes. The robes are made of a heavy linen, intended to be laundered by magic instead of by water, split open from neck to waist with laces up the front. The sleeves can be worn belled or laced close; Neville explains as he uses a wandless plaiting charm to close his sleeves that while it looks fashionable, big sleeves can be extraordinarily dangerous in the wizarding world and are only included in the uniform in the case of formal occasions. Hari and Hermione thus decide to wear their sleeves closed too. With the addition of their slouching wizard’s caps-- which refuse to stay on over Hermione’s hair-- and of Hari and Neville’s outer cloaks, the students are ready to go when the train stops.

Neville assures Hermione that she needn’t fetch her trunks-- they’ll be brought up to the castle during the feast. The students filter out of the train onto the dark platform, the first years milling about somewhat nervously as the older students head for a line of carriages.

“Firs’ years!” Calls a voice, and the trio turn to see a huge silhouette in the darkness, waving a lantern. “Firs’ years this way!”

The small mob of first years heads for the large man, Hari inconspicuously raising his hood and ducking his face. Hermione glances back and does a slight double take before understanding crosses her face; she takes Hari’s hand so they don’t lose each other in the crowd. Hari grabs lightly to the back of Neville’s cloak, but when the other boy notices he rolls his eyes and offers Hari his arm instead.

The three stick close to each other as the large man leads them off of the train platform and down a slim path, which Hari can feel through his shoes is made of loose, sandy soil and rocks. It’s very dark outside, and the air already smells of dew, but Hari can hear the rushing of trees around them on the path and he pulls Neville and Hermione a bit closer. The path eventually opens on the shore of a lake, the shore peppered with boats, where the large man stops and turns back to the first years.

“No more’n four a boat!” He calls, stepping into a slightly larger boat by himself.

Hari, Neville, and Hermione take a boat for themselves, eventually joined by Ron Weasley, who doesn’t seem to realize who he’s sharing with. Pansy, Draco, and the two bodyguard boys also get a boat of their own, and once every first year is seated the large man raises his lantern and the boats begin to sail on their own, as if by magic.

 _“Of course by magic,”_ Emerald says with a scoff.

The lake is huge and very, very black at night, but reflected in its surface is more stars than Hari has ever seen, and he feels Midnight’s attention brighten at he tries to make out constellations. Then, as they round a leg of forested land sticking out into the lake, the castle comes into view. By muggle standards, it’s huge; two medieval fortress style buildings with towering parapets, joined by a smaller square tower, and topped by several frankly enormous towers of a more renaissance style that almost look like they were grafted on later. Stained glass windows glimmer everywhere, casting warm, honeyed light out into the night.

Hari hadn’t noticed how tightly he’d been holding onto his friends until Neville makes a small noise of pain. Hermione, grimacing as he crushes her hand, looks at him worriedly.

“I can’t swim,” He murmurs very quietly, doing his best to lighten his grip. “Sorry.”

Hermione frowns at him for a moment, but nods and turns back to sightseeing. Eventually the boats dock at a little station at the base of a steep cliff, and the large man steps onto the stone platform at the base of a large set of stairs as he waits for the first years to disembark. Hermione and Neville step off ahead of Hari, and then turn around to help him onto land. Hari thanks them gratefully.

It’s an extremely long walk to the top of the stairs. Hari is in very good condition, but about halfway up both Neville and Hermione begin to puff. By the time they reach the top, even Hari’s legs are burning, and he wonders if the entire castle is going to be this stair-heavy.

 _“It is,”_ Yellow tells him wryly. _“One can only hope the person who organizes the schedules is aware that students will have to sprint between classes, else you’ll be perpetually late.”_

After a short pause for the first years to catch their breath, the large man leads them up to an enormous set of double doors which swing open without being touched, revealing a large entrance hall lined with candles and boasting high arched ceilings. A woman in green Victorian dress, the bustle made of tartan, stands waiting for them.

“Welcome to ‘ogwarts,” The large man says to the students. “Pr’fessor. I didn’t see ‘er, but that ain’t sayin’ much.”

The Professor nods and turns to the crowd, her eyes scanning face to face.

 _“She’s looking for us,”_ Yellow warns.

She pauses for a moment on Hari, who pulls his hood back just slightly so that the Professor can see his face, wondering if Yellow is right. She stares at him, and then nods again and turns to begin her address.

“Students. In a moment you will enter the Great Hall, where you shall be sorted into your Houses. Please wait for your name to be called before approaching the stool; you will then sit, receive your House, and proceed to take your place at the corresponding table. When all students are sorted, the Headmaster will say a few words, and the feast will commence.”

Her head turns slightly, as if hearing something the students can’t. “It is time. Please form a line two abreast.”

The students shuffle amongst themselves as the Professor turns to another huge set of doors, which again opens without being touched. With Neville next to him and Hermione behind, Hari and the first years enter the Great Hall.

The Hall is huge, easily four times the size of the entrance chamber, the ceiling height unknowable due to the fact that by all appearances it’s open air. Candles glimmer from crevices in the ornate carvings on the walls, glowing in the mouths of stone gargoyles and floating unassisted in midair. Four long tables run the length of the room, the first years walking between the middle two, and on a slightly raised stage at the back another table stands for the staff. The four student tables are only half full, Hari notices, with table runners and silverware in what are likely House colors. The Professor leads them to the front of the room as the large man steps past them to take his place on the end of the staff table. A stool with a ratty, wide-brimmed wizard’s hat on it sits below the teacher’s stage.

Once they are lined up parallel to the staff table, the hat on the stool gives a little wriggle, opens a slouching fold above its brim, and begins to sing;

****

“Oh you may not think I’m pretty,

But don’t judge by what you see!

I’ll eat myself if you can find a smarter hat than me!

You can keep your own hats black and prim,

Yout can keep them mute and tall!

But I’m the Hogwarts Sorting Hat, and I will cap them all!

There’s nothing hidden in your head

The Sorting Hat can’t see!

So put me on and you’ll find out just where you ought to be!

You might belong in Gryffindor,

The lion hearted bunch!

Where bravery and boldness have you follow every hunch!

Or maybe in wise Ravenclaw,

You’ll find your home sweet eyrie!

Their intelligence and sparkling wit deem them the visionaries!

Or possibly in Hufflepuff,

The sweet hardworking badgers!

Where honesty and loyalty are all that really matters!

Yet maybe you’re a Slytherin,

A silver-tongued sly snake!

Resourcefulness and cunning mind a serpent truly makes!

So step right up and put me on,

I’ll tell you where to go!

Lion, Eagle, Snake, or Badger, I will surely know!”

****

The hall claps, some students letting out whoops and cheers for the hat’s song. The Professor who had lead them in steps up next to the stool, waves her hand, and pulls a scroll out of nowhere. From it, she begins to read.

“Abbott, Hannah!”

“That would be Heiress Abbott,” Neville murmurs to Hari as a pale girl with coppery-brown hair walks up to the stool. “Considered traitors for a few generations, now, as they’ve been marrying non-magic folk. Hannah was nearly orphaned in the war.”

“HUFFLEPUFF!” Cries the hat, and Hannah Abbott goes to the second table from the left, where the silverware is made of steel and the runner is yellow.

“Astonbury, Davey!”

“SLYTHERIN!”

The yellow-haired boy goes to the table on the far right, with the green runner and silver cutlery.

“Bellstaff, Amanda!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

Amanda heads to the table next to Slytherin, with copper and blue.

“Bones, Susan!”

“Heiress Bones, from a powerful family,” Neville murmurs. “Her Aunt, the current Lady Bones, is also the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Susan _was_ orphaned in the war.”

The red-haired girl takes a seat on the stool, and quickly joins Hannah in Hufflepuff.

“Boot, Terry!”

The honey-blond boy takes the stool, and is sent to Ravenclaw.

“Brocklehurst, Mandy!”

The blonde girl follows Terry Boot to Ravenclaw.

“Brown, Lavender!”

Lavender becomes the first new Gryffindor, going to the table on the far left decked in gold and scarlet.

“Bulstrode, Millicent!”

“Heiress Bulstrode. She has two younger sisters and a baby brother, but the Lord Bulstrode is traditionally the oldest child, not the first boy.”

The unusually tall girl sits hesitantly on the stool. Hari thinks she looks very timid compared to her height; the hat sends her to Slytherin, and she takes her place on the far-right table with quiet grace. The silverware there is actually silver, ironically, and the banner green.

“Corner, Michael!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Cornfoot, Stephen!”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

“Crabbe, Vincent!”

One of Draco’s bodyguard boys lumbers to the stool, and is sent to Slytherin.

“He and Goyle are Vassals to House Malfoy,” Neville explains quietly.

“Dalius, Adam!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Davis, Tracey!”

A blond girl steps up to the stool and is sorted to Slytherin.

“Day, Kellah!”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

“Dunbar, Fay!”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

“Finch-Fletchley, Justin!”

The freckled boy goes to Hufflepuff.

“Finnegan, Seamus!”

Seamus stumbles over his own feet on the way to the stool, swears loudly, then turns scarlet and practically jams the hat on over his eyes.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Hari snorts.

“Goldstein, Anthony!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Goyle, Gregory!”

And there went the other of Draco’s hulking bodyguards, becoming a Slytherin.

“Granger, Hermione!”

Hermione makes a terrified noise behind him-- Hari can feel her shaking from here. He reaches back and takes her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze, and Hermione makes her way to the stool. She has to hold her hair down so the hat can sit properly on her head, causing a ripple of laughter from some of the older students. Once the hat is on, it stays there.

And stays there.

“Ooh,” Neville whispers. “That means she’s powerful. Hat stalls are pretty rare, but they’re a good thing.”

After a painfully tense span of time, the hat finally declares; “GRYFFINDOR!”

Hermione visibly slumps in relief, and spares a glance for Hari and Neville before hurrying to take her seat on the far left.

“Greengrass, Daphne!”

“Oof,” Neville mutters. “Her family is patriarchal. She has a younger sister and no brothers, but she can’t be the heir. She’s always been bitter about it.”

The girl is nearly as blonde as Draco; she breezes up to the stool and is sorted Slytherin.

“Hopkins, Wayne!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

“Jackson, Allisa!”

“SLYTHERIN!”

“Jacobs, Mayzie!”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Fay Dunbar squeals loudly and pulls her friend to sit with her.

“Jones, Megan!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

“Lane, Mauricius!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Li, Su!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Longbottom, Neville!”

“Oop!” Gasps Neville. He freezes for a moment, clutching Hari’s arm, and Hari has to give him a shove to get him walking. The other boy heads to the stool looking a bit like an automaton, his muscles tense from nerves.

Again, it’s a hat stall. Hari wonders if the hat purposefully takes its time with the most nervous students, which would be extremely rude of it. He can see Neville’s leg twitch every now and then from pent up nerves. Eventually, the hat declares…

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Neville too slumps in relief. Hermione pounces on him when he takes his seat beside her at the Gryffindor table, and both give Hari a look which clearly says, “Good luck.”

“Macmillan, Ernest!”

Hari peers curiously at the boy who must be related to Neville’s mother. He suddenly feels extremely isolated without Neville by his side, whispering to him the details of each person’s parentage. Ernest is sorted Hufflepuff.

“Malfoy, Draco!”

Draco swaggers up to the stool and is sorted Slytherin in the blink of an eye. Vaguely, Hari wonders if a long sorting time means great power, does a short sorting time equal a magical dunce? He’ll have to wait for class to find out, but one can hope.

“Malone, Roger!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Merkin, Natalie!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

“Nott, Theodore!”

A mousy, superior looking boy is sorted Slytherin, and he joins Draco at the table. “Parkinson, Pansy!” quickly follows him, and sits with her betrothed.

“Patil, Padma!”

Hari is a little blindsided to see a girl with features like his, although her hair is much better behaved. She goes to Ravenclaw, while her twin “Patil, Parvati” goes to Gryffindor, and then Hari realizes with a lurch that he’s--

“Potter, Hari!”

\--Next. Shite. The Hall goes dead silent, the first years around him looking to and fro, excitedly trying to spot him. Panic rumbles in his chest before a wash of yellow blankets his mind.

Yellow stands up straight and slowly lowers his hood before stepping out of the crowd. The silence in the Hall is deafening, the only sound his footsteps as they echo on the stone floor. The Professor gives him and unreadable look as Yellow approaches the stool and turns regally, taking his seat. The Hat is lowered onto their head, obscuring their view of the Hall.

 _“Oh dear,”_ Says the coiling voice of the Sorting Hat in their head. _“You again?”_

 _“Look closer, old thing,”_ Yellow thinks to it irritably, and he can feel a slight brightness as the Hat pokes around in their mind.

 _“Oh,”_ It says with sadness. _“I see.”_

Yellow can feel the colors looking at the Hat expectantly, and he shifts on the stool, aware that they’re the third hat stall this evening. The Hat continues to look around, humming to itself.

 _“Well?”_ Asks Yellow eventually.

 _“Hmm,”_ Says the Hat. “ _I’ll tell you what I told the last plural to sit beneath my brim, children. You would do well in Slytherin.”_

 _“I think not,”_ Yellow disagrees immediately. _“We may be covert by nature, but_ **_Hari_ ** _is not. He needs a home, not more of the same.”_

 _“Mm,”_ The Hat acquiesces. _“Well, if that’s the case. I’ll put you where I put the last one, too. You’d both have wreaked havoc in Hufflepuff,”_ it chuckles, before roaring aloud, “GRYFFINDOR!”

The Hall erupts in a deafening cheer. Yellow squints, blinking as the Professor removes the Hat from his head. The Gryffindor table has exploded, students standing on the benches or even the table itself, screaming and waving and dancing. It’s too much for Hari, who shrinks back from the display. Yellow does his best not to sneer and stands, sitting between Hermione and Neville at the Gryffindor table with poise.

“You alright?” Neville asks quietly, leaning in to be heard over the noise as students reach around his friends to touch him. Yellow stares at him, a burst of electric magic sparkling over his skin and shocking the hands away before he responds.

“Yes.”

Neville hums, not seeming to believe him, and they turn to watch the rest of the sorting.

“Ricey, James!”

“You took about mine and Hermione’s hat stalls combined,” Neville whispers. “I was worried for a second.”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

“Rivers, Oliver!”

“The Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin,” Yellow murmurs back.

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

“Roper, Sophie!”

Neville looks at him with wide eyes. “Really?”

Yellow shrugs.

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

“I have the traits, but I wouldn’t have flourished there. I argued for somewhere else instead.”

“Huh,” Neville says.

“Runcorn, Janice!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Thomas, Dean!”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

“Tolipan, Alice!”

A girl grimaces and stomps up the the stool. “HUFFLEPUFF!”

“Turpin, Lisa!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Vane, Emma!”

“SLYTHERIN!”

“Weasley, Ron!”

Ron walks up to the Hat and is sorted Gryffindor. He sits with his group of cheering brothers, and avoids looking in Yellow’s direction.

“Yu, Leanne!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

“Wait, wait a second,” Murmurs Hermione, staring at her hands.

“Zabini, Blaise!”

A black girl with a very long, smooth ponytail glides up to the stool and is sorted Slytherin.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Hermione mutters.

“What?” Yellow asks, glancing at her hands. She appears to be counting on them.

“That’s… it could have sent six boys and six girls to each house, but it sent seven girls to Hufflepuff, Slytherin, and Gryffindor, and only four boys, instead,” Hermione says.

Yellow stares at her hands, then sits up tall, trying to find Alice Tolipan through the sea of heads. He knows for a fact Gryffindor has six boys and six girls even. What if…? Across the hall, Blaise Zabini meets his gaze with piercing black eyes, and Yellow somehow gets the impression that the Slytherin wants to talk.

Up at the staff table, the Headmaster stands from his gilded seat. He’s a tall man, a more stereotypical wizard Yellow has never seen. His hair and beard are very long and very white, glistening with all manner of beads. His robes seem to be influenced by Indian fashion; they’re purple with gold patterns which appear to morph and move in the candlelight.

“Welcome!” He cries. “Welcome all of you to Hogwarts! Welcome, all of you, to school! I know you are all very hungry, and so indulge me in a few words before we feast; nitwit! Oddment! Blubber! Tweak! Thank you.”

He sits down to a healthy blanket of applause. Yellow blinks slowly at him, only peripherally aware of food appearing on the golden plates.

“Is he always like that?” He mutters to no one in particular. No one answers.

Apparently, everyone else _is_ very hungry. Considering how much he’d eaten for breakfast, and how little he normally is allowed to eat, Yellow hasn’t found himself hungry at all. He stares at the fast array of rich foods and feels his stomach turn a little.

After a moment of watching his classmates serve themselves, he grudgingly stands up to grab a serving of green beans. They’ve been cooked, sadly, as he quite loves fresh ones, but they’re the only vegetable Yellow can see in the immediate area. He tries to eat them, finds them soaked in butter and bacon grease, and quickly desists before his stomach rebels. After a moment of floundering over the unappetizing array of food, he ends up selecting a bread roll and cannibalizing the bland, fluffy innards from it.

By the time the meal has settled into a routine atmosphere, Yellow has finished the innards of his roll and begins to gnaw on the crust of it instead. Ron Weasley, across the table from him and some seats down, already appears to be on his third plate. Yellow kicks his feet under the bench and sighs, ready for the meal to be over already. It’s so _loud._

By the time dessert arrives, Yellow realizes he’s been dissociating and staring into empty space. He jerks himself back to consciousness and surveys the new array of food, only to be steeply disappointed; not a single dessert dish contains anything recognizable as fruit. Hopefully the normal, non-feast meals will offer fresh fruits and vegetables, Yellow thinks, or else he’ll have to find the kitchens and stock up his bag. Neville gives him a wan smile when Yellow notices his second serving of dessert, and Yellow decides he doesn’t want to ask why.

A bit sleepy, Yellow spends his time looking around. At the high table, the Professor who had brought them in is talking to to Headmaster. Yellow notices a very petite wizard at the table, with white hair and an upturned, batlike nose. Further down, a turbaned man talks to a wizard dressed all in black, who looks to be having a spectacularly bad time. As the turbaned man turns more to face his dour colleague, a blinding, rushing, sucking sensation overwhelms Yellow’s senses.

When his vision clears, Yellow finds himself supported by Hermione; he must have slumped into her. People all around are asking if he’s alright; Neville’s hand is on his back.

“Sorry,” he mutters, waving everyone off and sitting up, nodding to Hermione when she looks at him with worried brown eyes. “Sorry, just got dizzy for a moment. Nothing to worry about.”

Neville’s hand hesitates for a moment before leaving his back, and Yellow lets out a breath of relief, muscles he hadn’t knowingly tightened relaxing. For the rest of the meal, he avoids turning his face to the staff table, instead only looking with his eyes. He can feel Hermione and Neville’s attention centered on him even as his friends appear to be engaging with the people around them.

At long last, the tables clear themselves of food, and the Headmaster stands.

“Now then. As we are all fed and watered, I have a few routine announcements.”

A few of the older students titter, and the Headmaster smiles.

“First years should note, the Black Forest is forbidden to all students,” he says, and a handful of older students recite along with him. “Our caretaker Mr. Filch would like to remind you that there is no magic allowed in the corridors outside of class. Quidditch trials will be held the second week of term, the schedule will be posted in Madam Hooch’s office.”

He smiles as the students applaud those who had managed to say his announcements in step with him. Then, his face turns very serious.

“I would also like to inform you of a change of policy this year. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the third floor corridor is off limits to all students who do not wish to die a most painful death.” He surveys the Hall. No one is laughing or clapping now; the students look back at him with unsure eyes. “It is in all your best interests to avoid the third floor entirely. Well, that is all I have to say tonight. Prefects, please escort your new first years to your common rooms. Goodnight, children!”

“Goodnight, Professor!” Several students call back cheerfully.

With that, the spell is broken as students begin to stand from their tables. Yellow presses his lips together as he stands, scanning the crowd. He’s not certain if he should approach the head table now to speak with his Head of House, or if he should ask a prefect to fetch them instead. After a moment of tense deliberation, he turns and weasels his way free of his classmates, sprinting to the staff table before all the teachers can depart.

“Excuse me,” He calls, aware that people are looking at him. “I need to speak with my Head of House.”

“Urgently?” Asks the Professor who had lead them in. She stops behind the table, regarding him with raised eyebrows.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Yellow says.

The woman stares at him for a moment, and then she turns and walks out from behind the staff table. “Follow me then, please.”

“Are you my Head of House, Ma’am?” Yellow asks, hurrying to follow behind the much taller Professor as she leads the way back out into the entrance hall. She leads him to a large staircase on the left.

“I am. My name is Minerva McGonagall.”

“Oh,” Yellow says, somewhat dumbly. So this is McGonagall.

The Professor leads him up the stairs, into a square tower of moving staircases. She takes him up several floors and then down a few halls before opening the door to a room and standing aside. Yellow precedes her into the room, which is a lushly decorated office, and McGonagall enters behind him, closing the door.

“Now, Hari,” She says, taking a seat behind her desk. “What can I do for you?”

Yellow plays with his fingers nervously, slowly walking to the seat in front of the Professor’s desk and sitting down. The Professor looks at him expectantly, and he notices the grey bead plaited into her forelock.

“Hari?”

“Sorry,” Yellow mutters.

“Is something the matter?”

“I, um, I don’t know.”

She blinks. “I beg your pardon? It’s quite late, Hari, if you haven’t a problem then it would be better you were off to bed.”

“I-- yes, no, I know--” Yellow stutters. Damn it, why is this so hard? “I-I don’t-- Is there a way-- Um.” He heaves a sigh, unable to completely catch his breath. “Do I have to sleep in the girl’s dorms?”

McGonagall stares at him for a moment before leaning back in her seat, frowning. “Is there somewhere else you would sleep?”

“A-anywhere?” He offers dumbly. “Anywhere but there? Please, Professor.”

She sighs. “Hari, unless you were married, I’m afraid there are no other quarters available. I understand being shy, but there’s a bathroom attached to every dormitory, and all of the beds have drapings you can close. You’ll get used to it in time.”

Unable to properly explain himself, Yellow feels frustrated tears building in his throat. He ducks his head sharply, blinking in an attempt to stave them off. McGonagall waits sympathetically, and after a while he nods his acceptance.

She leads him out of her office, heading for one of the towers. Yellow feels himself blurring emerald as he walks behind her, digging his nails into his forearm as he tries not to scream or cry or lash out at something. Damn it. _Damn_ it. He can’t figure out what to do.

McGonagall stops in front of a portrait of an opera singer lounging on a settee. The portrait ignores the Professor, examining her coupe of champagne.

“Matilda,” Says Professor McGonagall.

“Oh, hm?” Says the lady in the portrait. “Oh, Minerva, my dear! Hello!”

McGonagall snorts quietly. “Caput Draconis.”

“Oh, yes,” titters Matilda, and her portrait swings toward them like a door.

The room they step into is large, a fireplace on the far wall, tables and bookcases near them. The right wall is occupied by several windows, the left by staircases. The room is empty of students.

“This is the Gryffindor Common Room,” McGonagall explains. “The staircase nearer the portrait hole leads to the girl’s dormitories, the farther one the boy’s. Be aware that boys cannot climb the girl’s staircase; it will turn into a slide and sound an alarm if one tries. Quite useful for escaping unwanted affections,” She notes wryly. Yellow feels dizzy panic steal through him; what if the stairs don’t let him up?

“Thanks,” He manages weakly, walking shakily to the girl’s stairs. He stops before them, staring at the bottom step.

“Never be afraid to ask for help, should you need it,” Professor McGonagall says pointedly. “Goodnight, Hari.”

“Goodnight,” He echoes as she exits the portrait hole.

He stands there for a long time by himself. Fear and despair and frustration and grief swirl through him. Slowly, the longer the emotions burn, the less he feels them. Yellow raises his foot and places it on the bottom stair to the girl’s dormitories.

Nothing happens.

New emotions crash through him; confusion, shock, relief-- panic. He climbs the steps mechanically, pushing open the first door he comes to. Has he had it wrong all these years? Why would the stairs let him up? How does the magic work, is it him or the tower?

The inside of the first year girl’s dorm is bright and cheerful. Everything is done up in red and gold, the carpets plush, the drapes velvet. The room is circular, shaped oddly to accommodate the staircase the spirals around the outside. The other Gryffindor girls are unpacking and talking; Lavender and Parvati are already dressed in old fashioned nightgowns, Fay and Mayzie in more modern ones, and Kellah in muggle pyjamas. Hermione seems to be laying out all of her clothes on her bed, planning outfits.

Yellow stands there for a moment, frozen in place. He feels like such an intruder, like a boy entering a space girls are supposed to be safe from them; he feels like he doesn’t belong.

 _This isn’t home,_ He thinks despairingly. _This isn’t what I wanted._

 _“Maybe you don’t have a home,”_ Suggests a low, oily voice from deep inside his mind.

Terrified, Yellow slams up a wall in his mind and walks to the only empty bed, but he can still feel the malicious presence leering at him from the depths of his mind. The other girls might be looking at him or talking to him, but Yellow has gone blind and deaf; he climbs onto the empty bed and draws the curtains shut, curling up in the middle of the duvet. The darkness shuts off part of the raging in his mind, but he can still hear the noises the other girls are making, and curls an arm around his head in a desperate attempt to shut it off. It barely helps, and in a moment someone peeks into his curtains-- Hermione, dressed in Pyjamas and holding a bag of toiletries.

“Are you okay?” She asks softly, and bitterness rumbles through Yellow’s chest-- he just wants to be left alone.

“‘M fine,” He says shortly, looking away from her.

Hermione stares at him for a moment-- he can sense the furrow between her brows. Then she utters a sad little, “Okay,” And gently closes his curtains, returning him to darkness.


	8. Chapter 8 - The First Day of Classes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry & Co get some education

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OwO,,,,,, so many new things!!!!!

Yellow wakes up monday morning exhausted. Fatigue fills his muscles with lead, but it only takes a few seconds for the crushing anxiety to return. 

He’s in the girl’s dorm. Trapped, as it were. Isolated in his little bubble of despair, an unwilling infiltrator amidst his innocent peers. Would they hate him, if they knew? Would Hermione hate him?

He finds his body moving without him, his toes nudging something at the foot of the bed. It’s silent outside of the curtains, so he’s not sure what time it is, but it’s too dark and he can’t cast the lighting spell yet so he cautiously parts the curtains. A stream of fresh air flows in immediately, followed by the weak grey lighting of early morning.

The thing at the foot of his bed turns out to be several things. A woolen scarf and hat, knitted from scarlet and metallic gold, and a bright red ribbon with a bead on it. Yellow holds the ribbon up to the dim shaft of light.

It’s one of the ruby beads, he realizes. Pure gemstone, carved with a small lion standing rampant like on his family bead. This must be a House bead, then, and the purple ones that come after it are for school awards or some such. He almost decides to plait it into his hair before he remembers asking Pansy to teach him the charms. He’ll do it with her, then; in the meantime, the ribbon is tied around his wrist.

No one else is awake, he realizes as he creeps out of bed. He never took his trunk out of his pocket; or indeed changed out of the clothes he’d been wearing yesterday, so Yellow ghosts across the carpeted floor and down the stairs to the also-empty common room before heading out into the school proper. So early in the morning, the school is dead silent. Even Matilda, the portrait guardian, is asleep. Yellow ducks into an empty classroom to change before heading for the Great Hall.

It’s not as hard to find as he would have thought. The hardest part is just catching a staircase going in the right direction, which can take several minutes and is quite frustrating. But he makes it to the grand staircase with relative ease, and without meeting a single other person until he spots that Slytherin, Zabini, heading down the stairs as well.

Zabini pauses when they spot each other, and they engage in a sort of staring contest.

“Potter,” Greets Zabini cautiously, and Yellow decides to take a risk.

“Call me Hari,” He says, stepping forward and extending his hand for a handshake.

Zabini stares a little more, and then accepts the handshake. “I go by Blaise.”

“Did you want to speak with me, Blaise?” Yellow asks amicably as they continue down the stairs together.

“Well you noticed it, didn’t you?” Blaise asks, glancing at him shrewdly. “Or your muggleborn friend did, I saw her counting.”

“Mm,” Yellow says neutrally.

“I’d like to speak to Tolipan as well-- you and them are the obvious ones, so I sought you out myself lest you mistake Millicent for the extra Slytherin girl.”

Yellow snorts. “I admit you wouldn’t have been my first guess.”

Blaise shrugs. “One does what one must.”

By then they’ve reached the doors of the Great Hall, which is empty except for a few ghosts, someone’s cat, and a teacher with extremely magnifying spectacles up at the staff table.

“Must we?” Yellow asks, turning to his companion. “I mean, really? At home, sure, survival first. But we’re at Hogwarts now.”

Blaise looks unamused. “Did McGonagall let you change sleeping arrangements?”

Yellow stares at him.

“Exactly,” Blaise says, and then turns with a flounce of ponytail and heads for the Slytherin table.

Yellow walks slowly to the Gryffindor table on the other side of the Hall, then stops dead once he sees the food arrangements. Not a bloody fruit or vegetable in sight. Instead he turns on his heel and marches back to Blaise, who is daintily preparing a plate.

“Do you know where the kitchens are?” Yellow asks, and Blaise looks up at him with a quirked eyebrow.

“Down one floor, tickle the pear.”

“Thank you.”

And so Yellow goes down one floor, finds a portrait of a bowl of fruit, and tickles the pear.

The Hogwarts kitchens are directly beneath the great hall, but taking up all of the space of the Entrance Hall as well to make space for cooking. Yellow stares for a moment as his brain process the short, green, saucer-eyed creatures bustling about. They seem to be uniformly about two feet tall, with varying shades of green skin, their bodies covered in a thick covering of brown or blond fur. Their eyes take up two thirds of their faces, and wide ears stick out from the sides of their heads.

One of them spots him and bustles up, worrying its long knobbly fingers together nervously. 

“Sir?” It squeaks, in a voice so high Yellow is sure it would have knocked him straight out if he’d had a headache.

“I was just wondering why there are never any fresh fruits or vegetables served at meals?” Yellow asks, trying not to be put off by the sudden abundance of a different species around him.

The green thing worries its fingers faster. “Sir, wizards is not be eating fresh fruities and veggie-tables. Wizards is eating warm things, sir.”

“Well this wizard doesn’t,” Yellow says, a bit grumpily. “Is it not possible to add them to the meals?”

“No, sir,” The thing squeaks pitifully, looking as if it’s expecting to be hit.

“Can you give some directly to me, then?”

“Oh!” It brightens, and nods. “Yes sir, I can be doings that!”

It bustles away and returns with a wicker basket of carrots, apples, oranges, and cucumbers. 

“Is this to sir’s liking?” It asks.

“Perfect, yes, thank you,” Yellow says, pulling out his pillowcase bag and beginning to load it. “Say, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve never seen someone like you about before. Um, wh-what..?”

It’s already frankly enormous hazel eyes widen. “Sir is asking? Does sir want official or real version, sir?”

_ “That’s never good,”  _ Remarks Emerald dryly.

“Um, the real version first, please, and then the official version,” Yellow says.

It draws itself up importantly, puffing out the tawny fur on its chest. “We is being gremlins, sir! We is used to be living in the forests at night, but wizards be catching us and using us as slaves! We was used to be helpful, sir, but now we is forced to be for not even any milk and honey!”

“A-and the official version?” Yellow asks, his voice breaking nervously.

“We is the house elves, bounded to wizards to help and serve!” the gremlin sings with practiced cheer. “We love to help, sir!”

Yellow stares. The gremlin blinks.

“Do you have a name?”

It blinks again. “My name is being Aidi, sir, but yous cannot be telling wizards that Aidi said truths. Aidi could be beaten.”

“Excuse me? By whom?”

Aidi blinks, and doesn’t respond. Yellow sighs uncomfortably.

“Are there any books available on this, Aidi?”

“No sir,” It says regretfully. “Books is not allowed to be written, especially not by gremlins ourselves, sir. Cousins is trying to help, but cousins have less rights than wizards sir, and cannot publish.”

“Who are your cousins, then?”

“The ground goblins, sir. And the ground gremlins.”

Yellow stares for a moment before his brain connects the grey skin and batlike noses and ears of the Gringotts goblins. It also connects to the batlike nose of the small professor he’d seen last night.

“Okay,” He says slowly. “Thank you for all of your help, Aidi. I’ll probably be back every now and then for more food, if that’s alright.”

“That is fine, sir!” Aidi says cheerfully. “It is nice to be asked about! Have nice days!”

Yellow departs the kitchens thoughtfully, munching on a cucumber. So there’s chattel slavery going on in the wizarding world. Hermione is going to hate this, Yellow is sure; she and all the black muggleborns. He isn’t optimistic enough to extend his opinion beyond them, though. This is what Neville had been hedging around on the train. And the Gringotts goblins, and presumably other races of goblins and gremlins if he’s correct, are trying to work to free their imprisoned cousins, but don’t have enough rights within wizarding society to make much progress.

_ “This is disgusting,”  _ Grumbles Emerald.  _ “Honestly. Are we sure we come from this world? Are we sure we want to be here?” _

_ “I’m sure,” _ Yellow thinks back.  _ “We’ll look into this, ask that professor if he knows where to look. And we can always ask our vault manager at Gringotts if that fails. When we have enough information we’ll inform more people and start working to help; this world is a lot smaller than the muggle one, if you haven’t noticed. It will be much easier to make it a better place.” _

_ “So wait, what exactly is our agenda? Are we going to save ourselves first? The gremlins? We’re eleven, mate.” _

_ “You’re twelve and I’m fourteen,” _ Yellow retorts in annoyance.  _ “Harry is eleven. But yes, I see your point. We need to gather more information first before we start planning.” _

By the time he’s returned to the great hall, several more people have filtered down. Yellow debates if he wants to sit at the table eating his cucumber, but the decision is taken out of his hands.

“Hari? You’re up early.” It’s Neville, coming down the stairs with a guilty-looking Hermione avoiding Yellow’s eyes behind him.

Yellow shrugs. “Wasn’t sure what time it was.”

“Well it’s about seven now. C’mon, let’s go eat.”

At the table, Yellow is glad he didn’t skip out because Professor McGonagall comes by a few minutes later handing out schedules. They have Transfiguration directly after breakfast-- thank God he was able to practice yesterday.

Yellow notices as he stocks up on some bread from the table that the wizarding-raised students eat a  _ lot. _ Ron does it with gusto and minimal table manners; Draco on the other side of the Hall does it with as much enthusiasm but with several hundred times more poise. Pansy and Neville, who are both on the heavier side from a muggle perspective, eat just as much, although they seem to do it out of some sort of obligation. On the other hand, the muggleborns seem to eat a relatively normal amount, and then there’s Yellow barely eating anything at all.

Neville actually seems a bit bothered by Yellow’s eating habits, but Yellow is perfectly capable of ignoring the other boy when he tries to pester him into eating more; after all, he has a brainful of idiots pestering him all the time-- Neville is nothing. He can feel Emerald’s smug insinuation that he also counts as an idiot pestering whoever is at front, and he ignores it.

“Time to go,” Neville says eventually. 

Yellow glances around, but can’t spot a clock or watch in sight. “How can you tell?” He asks.

Neville stares at him like he’s turned purple and sprouted antennae for a moment before a look of realization spreads across his face. 

“Oh, muggle-raised! Wow, that’s a big oversight. All magical buildings have a bunch of magic woven into them for telling the inhabitants the time and such. I guess for those of us raised with it we never even question knowing what time it is all the time.”

Hermione leans around Yellow. “Really? How do you tell, then?”

“Ehm….” Neville wrinkles his nose. “It’s kind of like, you can feel it on your skin? It’s hard to describe.”

Yellow frowns and sends his magic out questing before pure shock stops him cold. He… he sent his magic out. He started his magic without trying. All by himself. Accidentally.

_ “Mate!” _ Cries Emerald.  _ “Bloody hell, good job!” _

Even through his shock he can hear confetti poppers and party horns inside his head. A little giddy, he sends out his magic again, and simply luxuriates in the fact that he is able to for a moment.

_ “So where is the magic clock, then?”  _ Asks Midnight.

Yellow realizes Midnight can already feel it, which is annoying but right now he doesn’t care. After a bit of casting around he notices the buzz of magical energy mere millimeters from his skin, and the time simply becomes known in his head; seven forty-three AM.

“Huh,” He says aloud.

“What, you did it?” Hermione asks, visibly forgetting her discomfort from the previous night. “How? How, how?”

Neville stands from the table, tugging on Yellow’s arm. “Guys, come on, we have to find the right classroom.”

Hermione continues to nag him as they find their way to McGonagall’s classroom, which is actually rather near her office. Yellow tries a bit half heartedly to explain, knowing full well that he can’t very well explain a process they accomplished more or less by instinct. The Transfiguration classroom is a little less than half full when they arrive, and the three compromise and choose a seat in the middle of the second row of desks. Yellow periodically checks the time as Hermione and Neville try to parse out how to feel passive magic, talking animatedly from either side of him; by seven fifty-eight, the classroom has only one or two desks empty, and is still distinctly lacking in McGonagall.

A flash of midnight blue draws Yellow’s attention to a tabby cat, slinking into the room from a door at the back. It pads across the floor and hops up onto the Professor’s desk, and then sits there fluffily, surveying the class and swishing its tail. Yellow stares at it and gets the distinct impression that the thing is amused.

At eight oh-one, Ron Weasley tumbles into the classroom. He looks around, seeing the room full but lacking teacher, and sighs loudly in relief. 

“Thought I was in for it,” He says with a breathless grin, taking a seat near the back with some other Gryffindor boys.

The cat on the desk morphs, stretching tall and feminine into the green-dressed form of Professor McGonagall, leaning against the edge of her desk and peering over her spectacles at Ron with a primly amused smile. “Is that so, Mister Weasely?”

The students gape.

Well, most of them do. Yellow narrows his eyes, feeling Midnight take off in their mind like a rocket of curiosity. The Professor stands, brushing off her hands.

“Welcome to Transfiguration. I warn you now that this class will present some of the most challenging wanded magic you will ever learn here at Hogwarts; Transfiguration is a discipline which requires the temporary restructuring of an item’s composition. The larger and more complex the item, the harder it is to perform the transfiguration, and the more skill it takes to hold it.”

She draws a slim wand from her sleeve and twirls it in an indistinguishable pattern over her desk, which turns papers and all into a large pig of roughly equivalent size. The pig snuffles around behind her as she continues to talk.

“Due to the difficulty of this class, I will not tolerate any sort of roughhousing or general misbehavior from my students; if you are not equipped to apply yourself, you shall see your grades plummet and I suggest you do not attend at all, as I’m sure it would be more convenient for all of us.”

The Professor steps to the side of her desk and, gripping thin air, pulls down a floating chalkboard from nowhere. She proceeds to explain the incantation and wand movements of turning a match into a needle. Yellow feels Emerald and Midnight behind him, the younger boys paying more attention. Magic is their area of expertise-- magic and studying in general, that is. Midnight at least is interested in the diagrams the Professor is drawing with chalk, taking mental snapshots of the chalkboard and little sound recordings of the exact inflection of the Professor’s voice as she says the incantation. They don’t strictly need it, in all honesty, except for the ruse of using their wand. Yellow grumbles as he slips away into their mind that school is more a test of performance than it is of learning.

When it comes time for the class to attempt their “first” spell, Midnight puts up his hand.

“Potter?” Says McGonagall, pausing.

“Ma’am, if it’s no trouble, would I be able to look at a needle before I attempt the spell? I’ve never seen one up close before.”

McGonagall doesn’t smile, but she seems pleased. She waves her wand, silently returning the snuffling swine to desk form, and plucks up a large upholstery needle to give him.

“Students,” she says. “It is wise indeed to take the opportunity to examine your target object if you are not familiar with it. Part of transfiguration is a certain level of visualization; if you have never seen an elephant, for example, you will never be able to transfigure something into an elephant regardless of your mastery of the wand motion and incantation.”

She hands Midnight the needle, and the colours examine it quickly. It turns out, their attempts on the train hadn’t been too far off. Aside from being a rather ugly needle, they had in fact still created a needle, so for now they won’t have to worry about learning a brand new spell in the middle of class. Except, of course, for the fact that they now have to do it wanded.

_ “Here goes,”  _ Mutters Emerald in their head, raising the wand and aiming it at the matchstick they’d been given. 

For theatrical purposes, Midnight says the incantation and performs the wand motion, while Emerald pushes a bit overwhelmedly at their magic, pinching the matchstick between the fingers of his left hand and trying to direct the magic through them. They’d practiced with their right hand, and without incantation or motion, which Yellow notes quietly was a mistake. The match stretches and becomes silvery and needle-ish, but doesn’t quite make the final step of the transformation. 

“Damn it,” Emerald hisses. On either side of him, his classmates also attempt the spell. Hermione succeeds in turning her matchstick to metal and making it pointier, while Neville strains despite his pronunciation and wand motion seeming to perfectly match McGonagall’s. His matchstick sort of flops over on the desk, and perhaps becomes a litter more metallic in colour, but that’s all. Aggressively, Emerald tightens his grip on the matchstick and tries again, and manages to manhandle the magic through his left hand and into a very ugly matchstick-turned-needle.

“Miss Potter!” McGonagall cries from behind them, starting Emerald into dropping the needle onto their desk. “Quite good! Was that your first try?”

“Second, Ma’am,” Midnight says.

McGonagall leans over them, picking up the needle to examine before nodding. “It’s a bit rough, but certainly recognizable. Well done.”

_ “Mneh Mneh”  _ Emerald mocks inside their head.  _ “Well done my arse, woman.” _

_ “It’s not bad, Emerald,”  _ Yellow says tiredly. 

_ “But it could damn well be better!” _

 

* * *

 

By the end of the period, Emerald and Midnight succeed in making a normal-looking needle in time with their fake wand work. Emerald is beginning to suspect he’ll always have to be touching something to transfigure it, but they can possibly work around that. It’s good enough, for now.

Hermione had also succeeded in the spell through more conventional methods, but Neville had not. His matchstick had only really made it to the point of being a slightly metallic, slightly pointy wooden sliver, and with every failed attempt Neville had gotten more and more upset. At one point McGonagall had tried to coach him through it, and Neville had apologized for every single thing he did, regardless of necessity.

_ “I don’t think I like this situation,”  _ Peridot murmurs quietly as Hari and Hermione guide Neville down the stairs toward the dungeons. 

Yellow agrees. None of them have ever seen a child apologize like that unless the child fears something, and with Neville’s joking reference to violence from his Gran on the train the other day, it paints an uncomfortable picture. Hermione perhaps doesn’t get the full scope of the situation like they do, but she can still tell something’s not right. She gives Yellow a worried look as she tries to comfort Neville.

Their next class is Potions. Yellow isn’t too worried about it; they didn’t have a lot of time to read on the train, but Peridot is a wiz in the kitchen. He’s sure she’ll enjoy this class, and he’s also sure the rest of them will find it interesting. As they near the classroom Yellow spots Blaise, who gives them a very slight but neutrally pleasant nod of greeting, which Yellow returns.

The classroom is dank, windowless and dim. Yellow, Neville, and Hermione again take a seat in the second row. McGonagall had let them leave five minutes before nine, allowing for navigation time, and it’s eight fifty-eight now. The students settle in, this time all on time, and at precisely nine o’clock the dour black-robed professor Yellow had noted from the feast sweeps into the room, his robes billowing behind him as the doors to the classroom close with a crash.

Yellow feels an uncomfortable itching in his mind and finds himself glancing across the room to Blaise, who slants dark eyes his way. His first instinct is to fight the sensation with all his might, but a broad cooling sensation spreads from several colours at once, and with an odd popping sensation a phrase is spoken into his head in Blaise’s smooth, mellow voice.

_ “Professor Severus Snape.” _

“Welcome,” Growls the Professor as he begins to prowl the head of the classroom, “To Potions. I am your Professor, and you shall address me as Sir, Professor, or Professor Snape. This is not a class which will require your surely lacking wandwork for many years yet; if I see a wand within this room, I shall take it for the remainder of the period.” He stops before his desk, turning to face the classroom with severe eyes. “Be warned. If you should see fit to misbehave in my class, you shall find yourself expelled before you can say a single word in defence of your miserly performance.”

And then those piercing eyes alight on Yellow, who is promptly no longer yellow but Emerald and Midnight Blue.

“Little Miss Potter,” Snape coos, his voice heavier than old velvet and just as dark. “Our new…. Celebrity. Tell me, Miss Potter-- What would I get if I added powdered root of Asphodel to an infusion of Wormwood?”

That itching sensation again, but Emerald and Midnight easily let Blaise’s voice flow into their head. 

_ “A step in the preparation of Draught of Living Death.” _

“A step in the preparation of Draught of Living Death, Professor,” echoes Midnight faithfully.

“Hm,” Says Snape quietly. “And where, pray tell, would I find a bezoar?”

_ “Inside the stomach of a goat.” _

Midnight says so, and Snape narrows his eyes at them. 

“Very well, Miss Potter. And finally, what is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?”

This one, they know on their own from Neville’s happy ramblings on the train. “They’re the same plant, Professor.”

“Hm.” Snape stares at them for a moment, and then he resumes his teaching.

Today they learn how to make a boil curing potion. For Peridot it’s exceedingly easy; no more challenging than following a new recipe for the first time. She helps Neville, whose hands shake badly whenever Professor Snape sweeps by, and discusses the text with Hermione as they work. Hermione seems to notice something is different about Peridot as compared to the other colours; she stares openly and curiously as the two girls talk, but makes no comment. By the end of class, Peridot has a perfect potion, Hermione a great one, and Neville one which will certainly work even if it isn’t perfect. 

After Potions is a classroom introduction to Astronomy, and then the students have an hour free until lunch. Peridot stays out most of the time, letting Midnight take mental notes during Astronomy, and after that class she, Hermione, and Neville leave the classroom together.

“Say,” Says Peridot as they walk. “Didn’t we have something to do with that girl?”

Hermione looks at her quizzically before she remembers. “Oh, you mean Parkinson? That’s true, isn’t it?” They look around as they walk, but the other girl is nowhere to be seen. “Where do you think we’ll find her?”

“Beg pardon, Granger?” Says Parkinson’s sly voice from behind them.

They turn to find the other girl standing there, hands folded demurely before her waist. She curtsies gracefully, ducking her head and averting her eyes with the grace of breathing. “Lady Potter, Heir Longbottom, Miss Granger.” Neville bows in return and kisses her hand, but Parkinson doesn’t offer her hand to either girl. 

Hermione shuffles a bit nervously. “We just remembered, um, H-heiress Parkinson--”

“Yes, the plaiting lesson, I know,” Breezes Parkinson. “Very well. Why don’t we find a classroom; Draco, dearest, please save me a seat for lunch, won’t you?”

Malfoy, some distance behind her, nods and makes his way past them. Neville scrunches up his mouth ruefully. “I’ll leave you ladies, then. See you at lunch, guys.”

Parkinson leads them to an unused classroom nearby and closes the door, turning to face the other girls with a businesslike manner.

“Now then. Plaiting charms, yes?”

She walks to the clear space of floor before the desk and melts gracefully to sit on the stone, Hermione and Peridot copying her motion with hesitation. Parkinson smooths her skirts into place and begins to teach.

“So. Normally this is taught to children; I’ll teach you the way my mother taught me. You both know how to plait the muggle way, I hope?”

“Yes,” Hermione and Peridot respond nervously.

“Mmm, thank Merlin,” Parkinson says, and laughs a little to herself. Hermione and-- and Hari blink in surprise. 

“Um, sorry,” Hermione interrupts. “But why are you acting so different?”

Parkinson blinks, and then sits up a little straighter. “Granger, we’re in private with no boys and no superiors. Within reason I can be as informal as I choose.”

“Isn’t Hari um, a superior, though?”

Parkinson scrunches up her nose. “Well, yes, but look. In a world without war, the current Lady Potter would be just Potter and even if it is technically proper, I’m not super comfortable constantly harping on someone’s orphan status. Potter, if you’d prefer I keep your formal title at all times, I will, but otherwise in private I’ll just use your surname by itself.”

“That’s okay,” Hari says quietly. He hadn't really thought about it before, too hung up on the lady-ness of it all, but Parkinson has a point. He wouldn’t be head of his family if his parents hadn’t died for it first. “I’d rather you called me just Hari, actually.”

“Only if we were allies, Potter.”

And with that confusing bit of information to mull over, Parkinson teaches them to plait. It’s not as hard for Hari, who theoretically already knows how; in the hour until lunch, Parkinson leads them through the wandless magic with more affinity for teaching than either of them had expected, and by eleven forty-five both Hermione and Hari have their Gryffindor beads plaited into their hair. Parkinson also explains the cultural significance of beads, and why beadless muggleborns look like tourists; with no family beads and no beads to signify education or allies within the magical community, muggleborns truly look as if they don’t intend to stay in the magical world. Hermione seems deeply disquieted by this notion. Parkinson also explains the culture around hair in general in magical circles; that plaits are considered tidy and proper, especially when they’re so easy to maintain-- for black magicfolk especially, not wearing plaits is simply ridiculous.

“I mean really,” she says. “If you come from a culture with plaits or twists or dreadlocks, why not wear them? It’s better for your hair health anyways.”

Hermione tries to explain some of the prejudice in muggle circles regarding black hairstyles, but Parkinson simply can’t seem to understand them so in the end she leaves off and instead lets the magic-raised girl continue to prattle.

By lunchtime, Hari and Hermione are more or less “properly” magicfolk, now being able to plait and maintain their hair wandlessly. Hari also has the disturbing notion that he and Parkinson could even be friends, in some strange parallel universe.

_ “To be fair, she isn’t too bad of a person,” _ Yellow says quietly from the back.  _ “Her being uncomfortable with possibly reminding you of being an orphan is surprisingly empathetic of her.” _

But the three of them head to lunch, and Parkinson’s posture straightens and becomes driftingly elegant again as she makes a beeline for the Slytherin table after demurely bidding them farewell. Hari and Hermione only look after her for a moment before joining Neville on the other side of the Hall.

At the Gryffindor table, Neville offers Hari a letter.

“This came for you. Owl was ancient.”

“Oh,  _ fuck,”  _ Emerald swears, snatching the letter and ignoring Hermione’s disapproving look as he rips it open.

****

Hari Potter

****

Hey Hari,

Sorry to write you so soon. I didn’t get a letter last night, but Dad said maybe you just fell asleep after the feast, or maybe it got lost, or maybe you forgot. It’s okay. Mum got a letter from one of my older brothers saying Ron and you made Gryffindor-- congratulations! Maybe next year I’ll be Gryffindor too and we can see each other often!

Have you made any friends yet? I know Ron is really awkward but he’s an okay bloke, even if he is really messy and loud. Pease write to tell me all about classes and everything, because the house is creepily quiet with all my brothers gone and I might go crazy.

****

Hope you had a good first night,

G ♡

****

“Fuck,” Emerald mutters again. Hermione swats his arm this time.

“What’s up?” Neville asks.

“It’s this kid I met-- Ron’s little sibling. I promised to write last night about the Sorting but I guess I forgot.”

_ “The kid seems a bit down,”  _ Yellow contributes, summarizing the notions from all the colours. 

“Oh, about last night, Hari,” Hermione says a bit hesitantly. “Were you okay? You seemed really, um, kind of upset.”

“Yeah, fine,” Emerald says dismissively. “Just tired, you know-- long day and all.”

Hermione frowns. It’s very clear she doesn’t believe him.

They eat lunch after that with inconsequential chit chat-- Neville again eats the most, and Emerald the least. Following lunch is History, which the colours fully ignore in favour of Yellow, Emerald, and Midnight making research plans regarding the gremlins, and after that a two hour block for Defense. 

The Professor, Quirrel, makes all of the colours uncomfortable. Emerald dislikes him on instinct, perhaps in reaction to Yellow being so obviously wary of the man. None of them are quite sure what that reaction Yellow had the first night was, but after another dizzying sensation when faced with the back of Quirrel’s head the colours keep their face turned down at all times. It’s the worst when Yellow is up front, but all of them get some version of discomfort. It’s beginning to seem like Defence will be the class they participate in the least next to History.

After that, the first years have no more classes. Emerald sees Blaise on the way out of the classroom and raises an eyebrow; the Slytherin tilts their head to the side, indicating a small corridor.

“I’ll meet you for dinner, okay?” Emerald says to Hermione and Neville, and then he follows Blaise away from the main path.

“I talked to Tolipan,” Blaise says with no preamble once they’re some meters away from the rest of the student body. “I was right. He’s not a girl, either.”

“What was that in potions though, mate?”

“Oh, a form of mental magic. Sort of like sending brain letters, I suppose.”

“Uh-huh.” Emerald says, staring a bit unbelievingly.

“Anyways.” Blaise tosses that long ponytail. “You’re also a boy, right?”

“I… guess…..”

“Mh-hmm. Well, don’t go calling me one in public, but if you think of me as a girl in your head I will know and I will skin you for it.” The Slytherin flashes a very fake smile.

“S-so, what do we do, then?” Asks Emerald. “I mean me, you, Tolipan. Now what?”

“His name is Avery,” Says Blaise. “Tolipan. As for what we do, I don’t know. Not much we  _ can  _ do; I talked to Snape and he couldn’t get me my own room; not married, unfortunately.”

“McGonagall said the same.”

“And Sprout. So hey, we might be doomed, eh?”

Emerald punches the other boy’s arm lightly. “Way to be an optimist, dude.”

Blaise gets a funny little smile on his face-- soft and inward-turned. He rubs his arm where Emerald hit him.

“Anyways. I figure we can at least stick up for each other. Have a secret men’s club, or something, just for us.”

“Does that…” Emerald casts around in his brain for the proper etiquette. “Does that make us allies?”

“Not formally,” Says Blaise softly. “Not yet. But…. I’ll correct people on your’s and Avery’s names, and you his, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Emerald agrees. “Yeah, of course.”

“And you’ll step in if you see someone attacking me in the corridors?” Blaise asks, and although he says it with a laugh his face is pale and humorless.

“Yeah,” Emerald says, and his voice breaks a little. Blaise offers him a little smile, still lacking in joy. They’re in this together, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen I fucking love Aidi and I will defend it with my soul


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The colors have a busy day at school
> 
> CW for talk of food restriction and weight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edited? no. britpicked? no. i'm tired. take it or leave it I'm gonna sleep

That evening before bed, the Colours make sure to sit down and write to G. Emerald fidgets with his quill thoughtfully before beginning to write;

****

G. Weasley

 

Hey G!

I’m so sorry I forgot to write last night. The castle is huge and there’s a lot of people; I honestly just went straight to bed once I got to my dorm. It’s true I was sorted Gryffindor, as well as my two friends who I met on the train ride, Hermione and Neville.

It’s really weird being here. Class isn’t too hard, but there’s a lot going on that I wasn’t expecting. I tried to ask if I could sleep somewhere other than the girl’s dorm but my Head of House said no-- turns out, I wasn’t the only one. One of my yearmates from Slytherin and another from Hufflepuff had the same problem. We three are kind of looking after each other-- the Hufflepuff, Tolipan, is the most outspoken and we’re all a little afraid of how people could react. But we’ll protect each other. I know House is supposed to be family here, but in real life you can have family who aren’t related to you, so I feel like this is the same thing.

As for Ron, I may have accidentally insulted him on the train ride. I didn’t mean to, obviously, but I was raised muggle. I didn’t know hand-kissing was a thing in the wizarding world. He’s been avoiding me ever since. How many brothers do you have, exactly? I met Ron and the twins, but there are more?

Sorry again for forgetting to write.

****

Hari

****

PS-- My owl’s name is Samira

****

Said owl cheerfully takes the letter and wings her way out the window, and Emerald is left to be aware of the fact that he’s sitting in the girl’s dorm. The girls are all chattering about their days, and Lavender and Parvati seem to be berating Hermione for not wearing a satin headscarf to bed. Hermione looks to be extremely out of her depth and slightly offended, but Emerald doesn’t really want to get involved in this. He slips past the girls and gets ready for bed unnoticed.

****

\---

****

The next day at breakfast, G’s reply arrives.

****

Hari Potter

****

Hari,

It’s okay, don’t worry about it! I almost didn’t expect you to write at all. I’m excited you got into Gryffindor-- my family usually gets sorted there, so we’ll probably be together next year!

As for my brothers, I have a lot. Ron is the youngest, then the twins Fred and George, then Percy, then Charlie who’s in Romania, and then Bill who’s a curse breaker. I’m the youngest in the whole family and mum and dad where super disappointed because I was supposed to be a girl, but I guess the Healer did that test wrong. Charlie and Bill are my favorites, because the other four are a little mean to me. But you can still be friends with them if you like. I don’t know why Ron tried to kiss your hand-- our family doesn’t usually follow those traditions, but maybe he just wanted to make a good impression on a celebrity.

Are you really friends with a Slytherin? I always heard Slytherins were evil slimy snakes, so you should probably be careful. Also, why don’t you want to sleep in the girl’s dorm?

Samira is really cute, I hope it’s okay I gave her some treats.

****

G ♡

****

“Ron’s sibling again?” Asks Neville, buttering a piece of toast.

“Yeah,” Emerald says a bit distractedly. “Yeah, G.”

_ “How are we gonna explain about the girl’s dorm?”  _ Emerald asks silently. The Colours begin to brainstorm as they eat an apple from their sack.

After breakfast is a two hour Herbology lesson. For once, Neville is in his element; his posture changes on the walk to the greenhouses, and during class he speaks confidently and helps the students around him. Hermione has book knowledge, and Emerald and Midnight have gardening knowledge, but it’s clear as day that Neville has a special understanding of plants that goes far beyond wrote memorization or experience. 

In that class, Emerald also notices Avery Tolipan.

The other boy is surly as they come; of an average height for an eleven year old with sandy, badly cut short hair. Every single time someone addresses him as “Miss Tolipan” or “Alice,” he groans loudly and rolls his eyes to the heavens. 

_ “I have an idea,”  _ Says Yellow’s smug, sly voice, and then the older colour is striding across the greenhouse, his path set to take him past the Hufflepuff’s table.

Ostensibly, he’s off to fetch some more manure for his table. But on his way walking past Tolipan’s seat, he angles his foot just so, catching the top of it on the leg of a stool and lurching forward into a fall.

Of course, as he had anticipated, Tolipan is in the perfect position to turn and catch him.

“Whew!” Yellow sighs dramatically, standing upright with Tolipan’s help. “Thanks, mate!”

“No problem,” Says Tolipan slowly, but Yellow can see the cautious understanding in his eyes. “You’re Hari, right?”

“Yep, that’s me. What was your name?”

Tolipan stares at him, and then says very clearly and deliberately, “Avery. ...Tolipan.”

The two girls sitting either side of him quiet, looking between Yellow and Avery nervously. Yellow flashes what he hopes is a sunny, Hari-esque smile and shakes the other boy’s hand.

“Cheers, Avery.”

And that’s that. For a Hufflepuff, Yellow can tell Avery isn’t exactly dull; as he finishes fetching the manure for his table he can hear the girl’s at Avery’s table saying quietly,

“What was that, Alice?”

“Was that Harinder Potter?”

“You heard ‘im, it’s Hari, and my name’s Avery. Keep up.”

_ “Why are you like this, _ ” Mutters Emerald from inside.  _ “Couldn’t ‘a just walked up like a normal person, could you? Had to ham it up, didn’t you?” _

_ “But it worked just fine,”  _ Yellow thinks back cheerfully. Hermione gives him an odd look when he returns to their table and he flashes her a cheeky smile.

The rest of the period goes fine; it’s only until they’re walking back to the castle that Yellow trips on the lawn, and is Emerald when he stumbles upright.

“Aw, shite.”

“Hari!” Groans Hermione, throwing her hands up in exasperation.

“We’ve got Charms next, yeah?” He asks, ignoring her.

“After lunch, yeah,” Confirms Neville lightly.

“ _ Shite!” _

Hermione makes a noise of rage and goes into a little fit, smacking at Emerald’s nearest arm. He shakes her off.

“I haven’t got the lighting charm down, I’m fucked for sure.”

Hermione makes a noise like a strangled cat and grabs his arm, shaking him. Neville frowns thoughtfully.

“We could practice beforehand. Knowing me, we probably should.”

“Hey, you’re not so bad, mate,” Emerald says, chucking Neville’s arm lightly. Hermione stops her theatrics, still clutching Emerald’s bicep, and frowns a little. 

“You guys really want to study before class? I mean, it’s not that I’m opposed, I’m just used to people not wanting to study.”

“Gotta, ‘Mione,” Emerald says breezily. 

“Well then.” She rolls her shoulder back. “Let’s go.”

And so the three students march into the castle to find an empty classroom. Really, there are a lot of empty rooms at Hogwarts, Emerald reflects. Almost as if the castle is designed to house several hundred more students-- possibly just by dint of it being a castle.

_ “If there are so many empty rooms why couldn’t we sleep somewhere else, then?”  _ Grumbles Yellow.  _ “Policy?” _

Of course it’s policy. Emerald can tell Yellow already knows that, but he’s sure this is going to be a sore point between McGonagall and the older boy for some time.

Hermione chooses an empty classroom and holds the door for the other two, giving Neville an unimpressed look when he tries to take the door from her so she can precede him. Emerald pulls his trunk from his pocket and begins to dig for his books.

“Hari? You’ve been carrying that the whole time?”

It’s Neville, although both he and Hermione are frowning at him. Emerald can see dots connecting in Hermione’s brain.

“You never did unpack, did you?”

“Uhhh,” Emerald stammers. “I…. Didn’t buy a bookbag, actually-- bit of a dunce move, silly me. Figured since it’s small and featherweight, I could just…. Use the trunk…..”

It’s not a lie. They really  _ didn’t  _ think to buy a bookbag, but both of their friends are frowning still. 

“Anyways,” Says Emerald loudly, holding up his charms text. “Let’s practice, shall we?”

No surprise, Hermione is the first to succeed at the lighting charm. After attempting to coach Neville through the levitation charm and being unable to puzzle out why his seemingly accurate wand motions and pronunciation barely produced an effect, the three students had begun to study somewhat on their own. Midnight is sure if they could just have their hand on Hermione’s wand while she cast Lumos, they’d be able to cast it themselves-- but in wizarding culture, touching someone else’s wand seems wildly taboo. Emerald is hesitant to even ask, despite being relatively sure Hermione would say yes. And so, they spend their little study period attempting to figure out the spell from a distance, sending out their own magic to try and feel the shape of the spell from afar.

“I’m sure you’ll get it soon, Neville,” Hermione is saying when it’s half-eleven, and they begin to pack up for lunch. “You seem to be doing the wand motions right-- We can ask Professor Flitwick in class what’s going wrong.”

_ “And we can ask him  _ **_after_ ** _ class about the gremlins,”  _ Yellow reminds them at a murmur.  _ “I’d rather not have our dear friends around for that, Merlin only knows what Hermione would do if she found out.” _

“She will eventually,” Emerald grumbles under his breath.

“Hari?”

“Huh?”   
Hermione is looking at him expectantly. “Did you say something?”

“Oh no, sorry.”

“Hmm.” She looks doubtful, but moves on. “Let’s head to lunch, shall we?”

\---

The Great Hall is bustling with students when they arrive. Some people are clearing away their books from the tables-- it hadn’t even occurred to Emerald to study out in public, and judging by Hermione’s embarrassed glance, it hadn’t occurred to her either.

Blaise is chatting quietly with Parkinson at the Slytherin table, and Avery Tolipan is slouched amidst a gaggle of Hufflepuff girls, reading a book. 

_ “What was G saying about Slytherins?”  _ Emerald thinks.

_ “Prejudice,”  _ Yellow responds, even as he is suddenly struggling to suppress a malicious attention from deep inside their mind.  _ “Not so much based in fact is it is in opinion.  _ **_We_ ** _ were almost Slytherin, remember.” _

_ “Might tell G that,”  _ Emerald decides. 

They take their place at the Gryffindor table between Neville and Hermione and Yellow begins drifting closer to front, recognizing mealtime as one of his duties. They’ve gotten good, by now, at opening their trunk in their pocket and feeling around with a finger for the cotton of their food sack. Tipping a piece of miniature food into their palm is harder, but once it leaves the charmed confines of the trunk the food inflates to normal size-- Perhaps that’s how the teachers keep pulling scrolls out of nowhere. Charmed compartments in their sleeves, or something. Neville groans and rolls his eyes when Eme-- Yellow pulls a bread roll out of his pocket and sets it on their plate.

“Merlin and Morgana, Hari. Really.”

“Beg pardon?”

“You  _ never eat!  _ It’s honestly killing me, I’m getting secondhand hunger pains.”

“I do eat,” Yellow begins, but Hermione is already talking over him.

“He has a point. I really don’t know how you make it through the day, with such tiny meals. Don’t you know it’s unhealthy not to eat?”

“I do eat!” Yellow insists again, feeling quite unfairly put on the spot and blurring mint. “Honestly, are you blind?” He picks up his roll, waving it dramatically before their eyes before taking a bite.

“A single roll is not a meal, Hari,” Hermione says, frowning. "What about protein?”

“I had bacon at breakfast.”

Hermione throws her hands up in exasperation. “It’s like you’ve never heard of a rounded meal! Hari, you have to get some of each food group  _ per meal, _ not per  _ day!” _ _   
_ Yellow and Hari can nearly hear the nervous realization from their right. Yellow casts an unamused side-glance at Neville, who starts and looks down at his own plate.

So, it’s like that, is it? Neville is going to be the one who recognizes abuse for what it is in Hari, and Hermione will likely be the one to unwittingly lead him to the clues. A drifting emerald thought points out they aren’t even trying to  _ hide  _ the abuse, are they? Why does it matter if Neville notices?

Yellow shifts in his seat, leaning his knee against Neville’s under the table briefly. The other boy glances at him and gets the unspoken message immediately:  _ We’ll talk later. _ __   
After that, although he’s not very hungry, Yellow submits to Neville’s mother-henning and forces himself to eat a little more than he would normally. That seems to placate both of their friends, thankfully, and so the meal passes without any more argument.   
The Charms classroom isn’t hard to find. Professor Flitwick stands outside the door waiting for his students, looking like a very tall and wizardly garden gnome in faintly shimmering blue robes. They’re starting with Wingardium Leviosa today, so once Emerald demonstrates he can do it, he and Hermione spend the majority of the class helping Neville instead.   
Sitting this close to him, instead of being a few feet away like they had been when studying, Emerald and Midnight can actually feel the sparkle of Neville’s magic being blocked as it reaches his wand, only a thing tendril escaping to shift the placement of their practice feather. It’s not at all unlike what happens with their own wand, which is both reassuring and curious-- why doesn’t Neville’s wand match him fully? Is he like them? Emerald is sure they’d have noticed if he was, but perhaps…   
Hermione raises her hand, calling over Flitwick.

“Professor,” she starts plaintively. “We can’t figure out what’s going wrong when Neville tries to cast. I thought his wand motion and pronunciation was perfect but hardly anything happened.”

Flitwick waves for Neville to try again, observing closely as Neville’s round face furrows in concentration, already red from frustration. He then has Neville try again, and again, and his small face wrinkles into a frown behind his beard.   
“Mr. Longbottom,” Professor Flitwick says squeakily, “May I see your wand?”

Neville starts a little before handing it over. “Yes, sir.”

“Hmm,” Flitwick says, looking at the wand closely and turning it around in his hands. “When was this wand made, Mr. Longbottom?”

“I-I don’t…. I don’t know, sir,” Neville says nervously. “It was my father’s, but--”

“Frank’s wand?” Flitwick gasps. 

“Yes….”

“Dear child, no! Of course this wand won’t work for you, it belongs to--!” Flitwick cuts himself off suddenly. “Mr. Longbottom, a wand will only perform for it’s owner, or one who has won it in a duel. They cannot be passed down between family members like other artifacts.”

Neville doesn’t respond. He sits glumly in his seat, a little hunched over. Emerald has the impression he has realized something that he doesn’t want to say. Flitwick’s mouth, mostly hidden by his mustache, pulls to the side regretfully and he places Neville’s Father’s wand delicately on the desk.    
“Please see to getting your own wand from Ollivander’s,” Flitwick says gently. “For now, you can practice your wandwork and pronunciation with your Father’s wand, but casting will be a great struggle for you until you have one bonded to you.”

Neville nods and doesn’t pick up the wand.

Emerald can’t begin to wonder what is it that Neville’s thinking about, but he does regret leaving his friends behind when class ends to speak with Professor Flitwick alone.

“Miss Potter!” Says Flitwick jovially as Emerald approaches his desk.    
“Sir,” Emerald greets, feeling yellow stain his words. “I have a somewhat serious topic to ask you about, Sir, I’m sorry. I’m not sure how to ask.”

“A serious topic?”   
“Yes…. Sir, I went to the kitchens yesterday, and…. I, I spoke with one of the gremlins.”   
“Ahhh…” Flitwick’s eyes light up with recognition, and he leans back a little. “Yes, that would be…. Yes. I see, Miss Potter. How can I help you?”

“The gremlin said there wasn’t any literature available on their history, but they also mentioned their cousins the goblins, and….”   
“And you suspected I, being of goblin descent, might have some particular insight, yes?”

“Yes, Sir. I-I’m sorry--”

“No no, child, no need.” Flitwick leans back in his seat, lacing his fingers over his belly thoughtfully. “Though not many have chosen to ask, I do not hide my ancestry, nor am I opposed to offering some small education on the matter. It is the purview of a Ravenclaw to seek knowledge, after all, and I am Ravenclaw’s Head. Hmm.” He taps his fingertips together lightly. “Miss Potter, please visit my office at seven this evening. I will tell you anything you wish to know on the topic of gremlins that is within my capability.”

“Thank you Professor,” Says Emerald in relief. “I’ll be there.”

\---   
Neville and Hermione had waited outside the classroom for him, but although Hermione sends him a curious glance, she doesn’t ask what he was doing because Neville is already talking.

“...realize the wand wouldn’t take me.  _ Stupid, _ I should have known--”

“How could you have?” Hermione asks, obviously trying to keep him from feeling bad.

“Because! Everyone knows a wand owes it’s loyalty to it’s owner or it’s owner’s vanquisher! And guess what, my dad’s been vanquished!”

Neville seems extremely worked up, his face red and his voice beginning to clog with tears. “This wand has belonged to his murderer since I was a baby and now it doesn’t even work for me!” He slumps against the wall in defeat, sliding down messily to sit on the floor. He twists his Father’s wand back and forth between his fingers.

“Nev,” Emerald says, not entirely sure he’s Emerald but not entirely caring at the moment. They squat in front of their friend. “It’s not your fault you were given a wand that doesn’t work for you. If it’s as common knowledge as you say, whoever gave it to you should have known better, right?”

“Gran,” Neville says dully, nodding. “Maybe she thought if I could master the wand I could-- I could--”

“Neville, how old are you?”

“Eleven.”

They sit in silence for a moment, waiting for Neville to process his own words. Eventually he says, very softly, “But what if I could have?”

Hermione speaks from behind the colours’ shoulder. “You said yourself, a wand can’t be turned, Neville. I don’t think it’s about how hard you try. Besides….”

“I’m eleven,” Neville finishes for her. He stares at his Father’s wand. “This should be put away so my parents’ killer can’t get it. I shouldn’t have it.”

It’s a somber walk back to Gryffindor tower. Neville’s head is down, his walk ambling and tired. Hermione still seems to be worried, but in a more inward direction than outward. She frowns into the distance, thinking about something. Emerald, feeling himself again, walks quietly between them.

_ “Today has been a rollercoaster,”  _ He remarks quietly inside.

_ “It has,”  _  says Yellow.  _ “We’ve only a little homework--” _

_ “A little!” _

_ “Yes, a little. It’s only two essays. Anyways, once we’ve done that, we can compile a list of things to ask Flitwick after dinner. After Flitwick it’s Neville, and then we have to write G, and then we can sleep, yeah?” _

_ “I don’t know how you think that’s not a bazillion things to do,”  _ Emerald grumbles.

_ “It’s not like  _ **_you’ll_ ** _ be doing all of it. Buck up, now.” _

Emerald sends an envisioned middle finger backwards towards Yellow.

Still, Yellow is right. When they get back to the common room and begin to study, Emerald finds other colors taking his hands. Midnight and sometimes others are quick to provide information, and Yellow’s neat loopy handwriting covers one scroll and then another. Their work isn’t as good as Hermione’s-- they don’t have the energy to nitpick it right now-- But it’s at least done. Yellow selects a blank piece of parchment to begin their list of topics to ask Flitwick about.

Dinner goes quickly now that Yellow knows what to do. He holds out his plate, somewhat sarcastically, and allows Neville to fill it as he pleases. He can’t eat all of it, but if it makes his friends feel better and stop  _ nagging, _ it’s worth it. He ignores the oily smugness from the back of his mind, smirking at him for wasting food.

After dinner, Yellow begs off going back to the common room with a mostly-true excuse-- “Professor Flitwick asked me to stop by his office. I’ll probably take an hour or so, but I’ll meet up with you after.”

The charms professor’s office door is propped open when they arrive.

“Ah, Miss Potter!” Flitwick speaks, spotting them in the doorway. “Come in, come in, please take a seat.”

The office is plain, they notice as they enter slowly. Plain stone, plain wood. Flitwick evidently isn’t a man for interior decorating. He has some books on shelves, some framed certificates and photos, and some kind of chart stuck to the wall, but that’s all.

“Now, Miss Potter, what would you like to know?” Flitwick asks cheerfully as they take their seat.

“Just Hari, please,” They start. “Um. I guess, a history of how the gremlins came to be known as house elves?”

“Hm.” Flitwick steeples his fingers before his moustache. “Mhm. Well, it started several hundred years ago. Wizards had been populating Britain for a while, by then, living without nonhuman servants. We can very well do our own cleaning, as you know. However, some fellow or other decided that was too much work. I don’t know if you know the myths of “brownies,” fae folk who do housework in return for food. The wizard decided it would be nice if he could have his very own personal “brownies”-- actually the gremlins native to the forests here, you understand. 

Now to this day, no one is quite sure of how he did it. The magic he used was not standard, nor did he see fit to record his work for future generations. ...Perhaps it’s good we cannot enslave another race as he did the gremlins, but I digress. Whatever magic he cast, it bound the magic of the gremlins to his own, so that they could not live unless they served him. Refusal to work somehow blocked their intake of magic, so that they quickly fell ill and died.”

Flitwick sighs heavily, looking tired. “After that, the rest is history. The gremlins were distributed to those who had enough gold to suit that first wizard, and have lived under slave bond ever since.”

Emerald had been planning to take notes, but the mental imagery that had accompanied the professor’s short history was too startling for him to focus on writing. It takes a moment of processing before he can even think to speak again.

“I-is there…. What….”

Flitwick offers a rueful smile. “What can you do to help? Precious little, I fear, dear child. Treat the gremlins with respect when you meet them, repay their services by leaving out dishes of milk, honey, or bread for them…. There is not much else to do. As I said, the slave bond is unusual magic. No one has been able to decipher it thus far, though several wizards have tried.”

_ “So we decipher the slave bond, then,”  _ Yellow says decisively.  _ “Alright.” _

_ “It’s clearly very advanced magic,”  _ Comes Peridot’s gentle voice.  _ “We have the magical knowledge of a first year, Yellow….” _

_ “Leave it to me,”  _ Yellow responds blithely.  _ “I’ve got it.” _

“I…. thank you, Professor,” Emerald says slowly.

“Certainly, Hari,” He responds. “If my office door is open and I am here with no visitors, you are free to come and ask any more questions you may have. Please do not be a stranger, it pleases me to help inform a young mind!”

\---

Only Neville is waiting for them when they return to the common room. 

They stop a few feet into the room, looking at the back of Neville’s head where he sits on a couch before the fire.

_ “I didn’t want to have to have this talk,”  _ Emerald says quietly inside.

Yellow reassures him easily,  _ “Whoever can handle it, will handle it.” _

“Nev,” Emerald says a little nervously, and approaches the couch as the other boy glances back at him.

They sit together in silence for a moment. It’s never been quite this awkward before, Emerald notices. Neville is usually so easy to be around-- It’s probably them, not him, but the sudden tension between them makes Emerald feel as if he’s not cut out to be a real friend after all. Do real friends ever feel this nervous of each other?

Neville begins to speak into the silence.

“You’ve probably noticed by now that we wizarding children eat a lot more than you do.” He snorts. “...Everyone eats more than you do. But more than Hermione, too.”

“I have,” the colours murmur, their voice strangely mixed between Peridot, Hari, and Midnight. 

Neville nods, not seeming to notice. “It’s probably a cultural thing, but culture exists for a reason. Wizards  _ have _ to eat a lot because our bodies burn energy quickly,” He explains. “Producing magic burns energy-- using magic drains us and requires us to burn more energy to feel better again. We  _ have _ to eat more than a muggle does for our own well being. That’s why you see wizards from older families eating as much as we possibly can, even if it seems like too much. Having energy reserves is good-- and over time, having a well fed frame came to be associated with having strong and healthy magic.”

He pauses for a moment, seeming to mull over his thoughts. Emerald watches his fingers worry at a seam in the couch cushion of their own accord. “Muggles probably think I’m overweight, but my our standards I’m only a little above average. Hermione only wants you to eat because of nutrition, but Hari, it’s so much more than that. I’m sure you probably don’t care if potential suitors think you’re too skinny, but your magic is starving and you  _ need _ to feed it. When I said I was getting secondhand hunger pains from you, I wasn’t joking. I can feel how hungry your magic is. You need to feed yourself, Hari.”

It’s Emerald’s turn to pick at the fraying couch cushion as Neville waits on his response.

“I’m trying,” They whisper eventually, their voice still oddly mixed. 

“I’ll keep piling your plate up,” Neville says. “I like taking care of you-- I don’t have any siblings, but we are technically god-siblings. I don’t mind. Just try, yeah?”

The smile they offer him is an unfamiliar muddle of colors, but Neville smiles back.

It’s still a little awkward saying goodnight, at least until Yellow notices pink as they climb the stairs to the girl’s dorm and staunchly situates himself into the body ahead of it. Pink is not a color they indulge often, and now that they’re not safe in their cupboard anymore, he’s not sure when they can again. From far in the back, barely visible, greyed sea-green swirls and Boy’s voice mutters in annoyance as he guides the pink away once more. Good. Yellow sends a flair of gratitude after the retreating colors and enters the first year girl’s dorm.

The girls are quietly getting ready for bed. Hermione is nowhere to be seen, so likely in the bathroom, but the others sit quietly on their beds talking or cleaning up. Yellow focuses his gaze on the crimson shag carpet, uncomfortable being around so many girls in varying states of undress, and seats himself at their desk to write to G.

****

G. Weasley

 

G,

Today has been wild.   
So many things are happening at once, I don’t know if this is just what Hogwarts is like or if it’s something else. Do you know anything about house elves?   
Thank you for your warning about the Slytherins, but I think it’ll be okay. The ones I’ve met so far, while not exactly nice, haven’t been mean to me either. Two of them are even helpful, in a way, and I don’t see what they’d really get out of it other than just my good opinion. The Sorting Hat also offered to put  _ me _ in Slytherin, so I don’t think they can be inherently bad. Or maybe I’m evil, who knows!

As for the girl’s dorm…. It just makes me uncomfortable, is all. I feel like I’m invading their space, like I’m lying to them just by being in the same dorm. Maybe it’s just that I never really spent time around girls before now….

I don’t know. I really wish I could sleep somewhere else. There are so many empty rooms in this castle but I guess none of them are for random students for no reason. Oh well.

Oh, and yeah, it’s totally fine to give Sam treats. Just don’t make her too fat, or she won’t be able to fly.

****

Hari

****

Yellow grimaces at the letter. The handwriting doesn’t look like Hari’s, and the voice sounds like a mixture of him and Emerald, but today has been too much. If G notices, then G notices. For now Yellow just needs to go to bed.


End file.
